


The Rite of Spring

by FermionCat



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon Compliant, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Minor Character Death, Nationalism, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Red Room (Marvel), Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-04 12:28:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 10
Words: 18,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18343706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FermionCat/pseuds/FermionCat
Summary: He’s as deathly still as she remembers, two decades and an entire lifetime ago. She idly wonders if they learned a bastardized Khorovod and if westernizing the dance had polluted its efficacy. The rite had never worked, but they had kept trying: enacting the call for spring and hoping that it somehow took.





	1. Les Augures printaniers

**Author's Note:**

> Igor Stravinsky's _The Rite of Spring_ is a central motif, so there is an accompanying [listening guide](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18343799).
> 
> Please heed the warnings/tags and take care of yourselves.

“прекращать! cнова!”

The girls froze. None of them dared breathe.

Headmistress hardly swayed when she emphatically slapped her own thigh with crisp, economical motions. Her posture remained ramrod-straight; she was the very picture of perfection. “раз два три чет пять шес cемь восе!” The girls scrambled pell-mell to their places. _Plies_ , _tendu_ , _battement jeté_.

“раз _**два**_ три _**чет**_ пять шес cемь восе!”

Ekaterina stumbled on the second accent. A collective intake of breath blew through the dreary room, but there was no other indication that anything had gone amiss. Headmistress hadn't told them to stop.

* * *

Natasha lets her head fall back against a pristine white wall. The lab is lit with a soft pale glow; Wakandans seem to prefer filtered natural light. And she is the smear of blood in this environs: primitive and dirty and other. Shaking her head, she leans back further to allow the wall a larger share of her body weight, trying to let Louis Armstrong steady her in the present, his lilting croon jaunty and overbright. Shuri must have chosen it, is probably amusedly humming it to herself even now: “Oh, the shark has pretty teeth, dear/And it shows them pearly white.”

Ridiculously, Natasha feels lost and unmoored. She _shouldn’t_ , though, because _regimes fall every day_ ; _I tend not to weep over that_. The roiling old-timer jazz isn’t helping at all, its sprightly chords just another cutting reminder of how much of an outsider she is, how much she doesn't (will never) belong. The song’s swinging pulse is warring against the balletic piece churning gloriously, patriotically inside her head. 

The opposing musics clashed cacophonously, but that’s alright. The rhythm is supposed to be difficult, a challenge for the trainees - too difficult for normal children, but they were not children by then, not anymore.

It will be alright. Natasha always adapts, because the only other option is failure, and failure is unacceptable.

* * *

They first underwent modification right as their motherland underwent Перестро́йка. The doctors were kind even as they sliced through the girls’ virginal skin, their scalpels flashing prettily under the dusty morning light illuminating the compound through dirty windows.

“вы ценные предметы,” the doctor with horn-rimmed glasses cooed as he placed something cold against her ragged flesh. “мы бы не хотели потерять тебя, гм?”

Natalia shook so hard that the steel table rattled and a surgical instrument clanged atonally on its tray, the metallic sound so, so different from the warmer atonality of stringed instruments. Her rabbit-heart quickened and her awareness pierced through the misty haze of anaesthesia. Deliriously, she tried to lift her hand and catch the tortoiseshell rim of the spectacles, but it was impossible to move. 

“не оставляйте шрам,” Headmistress imperiously stipulated.

She still didn’t know why she was even here. Mornings were supposed to be scheduled for dance practice in the barre room...

The doctor with the glasses patted her thin arm comfortingly. “это хорошая девушка.”

* * *

“Hey.” Somehow, Wanda manages to catch her completely off-guard. She must be aware of how badly she startled Natasha because her hands are folded passively around her own torso, very deliberately not touching. “Hey, I’m sorry I startled you,” she says in her melodic way, vocular cadences rising and falling and disjointedly offset from her words. The odd rhythm makes her sound earthy, until she appears more pagan goddess than Sokovian teenager. It’s oddly comforting that Natasha isn’t the only one who clearly doesn’t belong in this futuristic wonderland.

“I thought you’d stopped reading our minds,” Natasha raises her eyebrows in challenge.

“I have,” Wanda gingerly lowers herself to a cross-legged seat while, conversely, raising her hands; her nails are painted a chic black - see? not a threat, “I can see the frown line in your forehead. It means that something upset you.”

“Just old memories.” Her inflection is perfect: wholly casual with just the slightest touch of _rueful_. Natasha is nothing if not a master of her craft. “Is Steve out at the central market again?”

“He went for his morning run with Sam,” Wanda scans her with unrepressed consternation. “You do know it’s five in the morning, right?” Ah, that’s why.

Natasha’s mouth feels dry, but she shrugs noncommittally, eyeing Wanda and silently daring her to continue. In the brief pause that follows, Wanda looks quiet and considering. 

Finally, hesitantly, carefully, as though she were cajoling a skittish cat. “You’ve been spending a lot of time here lately. I didn’t think you knew him well. You seemed scared of him, actually.”

Natasha finds that she still has no answer.

* * *

Tiny feet pattered on the unrelenting concrete, heedless of the dying daylight valiantly straining to illuminate the drab barre room, heedless of how much it hurt to dance, heedless that Natalia’s toenails were starting to blacken and fall off. Instead, they confidently traced music as familiar as her very name through the verisimilitude of steps.

“раз _**два**_ три чет _**пять**_ шес cемь восе!”

_Ronde jambe en l’air_ , _jeté_ -

“ _ **раз**_ два три чет пять _**шес**_ cемь восе!”

She was too slow and stupid, too absorbed by her battle against the irrational rhythm. In a silver flash, Yelena's blade snaked up to kiss her throat. Natalia hadn’t even seen Yelena produce the knife.

“отличный, Eленка,” Headmistress’s lips luridly stretched into something just short of actual approval, because it was far too dispassionate to qualify as a smile. Nevertheless, Yelena’s chubby toddler arm was flushed with exertion and pride, and she carefully withdrew the knife, minding its serrated edge. Natalia, for her part, ducked her head in defeated shame.

“ты создан из мраморa,” Headmistress praised Yelena, and Natalia wished she could take the older girl's place with all her heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I submit that the Brooklyn boys heard and loved “[The Ballad of Mack the Knife](https://youtu.be/Nk2YpWo2_Zs)” in its original form in _The Threepenny Opera_ (which opened on Broadway in 1933 but quickly closed after mixed reviews) due to the musical’s [socialist](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2439302) nature. Shuri evidently thought that leaving it on repeat-one in the lab would be a real hoot. Turns out, Steve still loves it and everyone else involuntarily twitches every time they hear the trumpet's opening notes.
> 
> [Перестро́йка](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perestroika) was Gorbachev’s political platform championing [гла́сность](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasnost). It was [first presented to the Soviet Union](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/27th_Congress_of_the_Communist_Party_of_the_Soviet_Union) in early 1986.
> 
> I am so so sorry for butchering Cyrillic. I was aided and abetted by Google translate.


	2. Rondes printanières

Headmistress was pleased today: the machinations of the motherland’s greatest enemy had been revealed, yielding massive public outcry that would serve to undermine the enemy’s leadership, and the girls' dancing lessons had been fruitful, with none of them committing any major missteps. “сегодня ты встречаешь солдата, героя союза.”

Natalia glanced at the other girls surreptitiously. The Soldier was the kind of bogeyman that ate little girls for disobedience. Hearing the telltale tramp of boots from the corridor, the girls masked their distress and stared fixedly ahead, schooling their faces into the marble masks that Headmistress so desired. 

The Soldier’s title appeared to be a misnomer because he didn’t so much march as _slink_ into the room. A tweedy man, he wore a red beret that was almost insultingly vibrant against the dull grey backdrop of the compound’s walls. Casually, his posture lax, he ambled up and leisurely assessed the small cadre of girls. Incredulity bloomed across his face: “они малыши.”

Natalia wrinkled her nose: _this_ was the famous Soldier?

And then she saw him.

It appeared that they really were just little girls, after all, because the man who stalked into the training room was the monster creeping in the shadows, just waiting for his chance to swallow an unwary little girl whole. His stride was so purposeful, so deliberate. So _controlled_. The hulking Soldier was the perfect agent, an imposing figure clad all in black and inexorable as death. A bright red star marked his arm; it was the symbol of the motherland, and he was the only agent fit to wear it as the handlers did. 

He prowled forward and stood at attention on the Handler’s left flank. His shaggy brown hair made him look like a bear. Maybe he really would eat them for disobedience. It would only take him one bite.

* * *

Natasha creeps catlike along the corridor, instinctively understanding that she must not be caught. She seems to have wandered into the future: the hallway is paved with spotless walls and a vibranium floor that muffles the already near-whisper of her footfalls. But the light is muddy and yellow. It is the light cast by the weak bulbs that struggled to illuminate the compound. 

It's impossibly surreal, because she’s never seen this place before and she’s been here a million times. 

There’s zero higher thought process, only a single overwhelming directive: **найти его**. Without being bidden, her feet carry her across the spacious room, directly towards the cryotank. Glass shards litter the floor, and she crunches over them unthinkingly. 

She arrives at the tank, but the encasement is already smashed, its jagged glass remnants twinkling infuriatingly. She can see her own face, shattered into its composite parts, all of them adding up to disappointed expression. The tank is empty. The target is missing. _He’s_ missing.

And then, from the blind spot on her right side, a metal hand surges into her sightline. His grip latches savagely on her neck, cutting off her air supply. Reflexively, she scrabbles at her attacker, but her nails clink uselessly against the dull steel. She tries to twist her weight, tries to gain traction, even as she realizes that it is over, _had been over_ as soon as he'd made contact. 

Her brain is getting foggier as she runs out of oxygen. A bright red star blurrily swims into view.

And then she’s falling, falling, falling.

* * *

Radiating austerity, Headmistress held her head high, her comportment dignified and her backbone pure iron. The steely clip to her voice was the sole hint of impatience, but the girls knew to heed those infinitesimal signals. No mistakes were to be permitted. 

Tatiana and Ekaterina were absolutely perfect together. They even looked the part with their matching black hair; like mirror images, they attacked synchronously, each one barely needing to communicate her intent to the other. But they were only toddlers, and the fight was over in scant seconds, the huge bear settling back into military repose and dangling a tiny girl from each hand. Tanya’s lower lip was trembling, and the bear’s Handler was smirking with amusement. 

Headmistress laconically called them to order: “следующий. начать.” Yelena and Natalia were partners today, and they possessed none of the previous pair’s effortless synchronicity. Of course, this failure had nothing to do with Yelena and everything to do with Natalia because Natalia was the runt: weak, lazy, and useless. She heard the harsh reprimands even as she joined the assault a full half-second late, trailing behind Yelena as always. _cлабый_. The bear turned its fangs to meet Yelena’s assault, his massive body shifting. His metal arm snapped up at a sharp angle to protect his left side, and Natalia charged right into it. _вялый_. She bounced off with a dull thud and crumpled to the floor, furiously trying to blink away the forbidden tears. _херовый_.

“cлабый. нам нужно будет изменить ее больше.” To her horror, a fat tear escaped and rolled over the round swell of Natalia’s cheek in spite of her efforts.

“Shit, baby girl, you okay?” The bear’s soft question carried easily through the clammy air. He hunkered down to Natalia’s level and tenderly pressed on her rapidly bruising forehead, as though baptising her. She had no idea what to do, because this was not protocol. She couldn’t muster the courage to risk looking up at Headmistress for instructions, lest she see Natalia’s tears. And in any case, the bear was still looming over her, commanding her full attention. 

But his massive thumb was gentle when he carefully pushed the flyaway baby hairs out of her eyes. Her little heart stuttered. Kindness was not supposed to be so easily given. The doctor with the tortoiseshell glasses had been kind when he sliced her flesh open, because she had _earned_ the kindness by being a good girl. She wanted to open her mouth, to tell the bear that he must be wrong - that Natalia was a very bad girl...

“солдат,” the Handler angrily stuttered out, and the spell was broken. Natalia jumped; she had somehow forgotten that the Handler was there, that there was anybody in the room aside from her and the hulking bear. Wide-eyed and still terrified that Headmistress would notice her tears, she instead looked at her assigned partner. Yelena’s eyes were as round as her own, the whites showing all the way around her chocolate irises. 

The Handler was angry. “отвечать, солдат!” The tiniest note of shrillness had snuck into the command.

Abruptly, the bear’s eyes glazed over, even though his frame remained tense and focused. He rose to his feet jerkily, with none of the grace he’d exhibited when he’d crouched down to examine Natalia. It was almost like he was _unwilling_ to obey, but that couldn’t be right. She chanced a quick peek up, up, up. The bear’s face was slack and utterly devoid of all expression, but his body was tense like a string pulled taut. She wondered what would happen if it snapped.

The Handler relaxed minutely. “солдат, пойдем со мной.”

The bear turned and followed the Handler from the room without a backwards glance. The heavy stomp of their boots rebounded in the hall, echoing their arrival. Natalia couldn’t seem to remember why she had felt trepidation the first time she’d heard the sound. 

At last their footsteps faded, but the small room was still silent. With unspoken coordination, the girls schooled their faces into an eerie facsimile of the bear’s blank expression and turned to Headmistress, who was still staring, stricken, at the negative space where the bear had knelt only minutes before. An important thought suddenly occurred to Natalia: “что мы должны назвать его?”

That seemed to wake Headmistress at last. She glanced at the unnatural platoon of girls, but her eyes quickly skittered away. She cleared her throat: “Драков.”

* * *

She wakes violently. Her spacious room is still reverberating with sound; perhaps she actually screamed out loud. Breathing heavily, Natasha runs her hands through her tangled red hair. Her fingers catch painfully in her curls, but the stabbing hurts hardly even register. She almost feels like she’s drifting, discombobulated, under the hazy veil of anaesthesia again. Nothing seems real, except for the nausea that would have crippled someone less well-trained. Less perfect. 

**ты создан из мраморa**.

She shakes her head in a vain attempt to dislodge the intrusive thought. The battle for sleep is long lost, so Natasha dispiritedly swings her legs over the side of her too-comfortable bed. Padding across her room, she snags her robe from where it hangs by the door, thinking that she might sneak down to the kitchens and liberate a midnight snack. It will be good to attempt the exercise, even if only to see whether she can navigate the Wakandan security undetected.

But old habit has her ghosting downstairs to the containment room instead. She pauses at the lab’s entrance, peering inside and inhaling deeply. It is so familiar. The clandestine visit. The harsh bite of cold. Her fluttering heartbeat already settling, she steps across the threshold.

The music is playing in her head again. Breathing more steadily, she begins to dance.

* * *

That same night, in their sleeping room with its sterile heavy-framed beds neatly arranged in two rows of three, the girls took turns poking each others’ forehands with chubby thumbs. High-pitched, girlish titters burbled out of them as they unsuccessfully attempted to mimic the bear’s strange sounds. Tatiana was the closest, but she was smothered in giggles with the rest of them. 

Natalia sat up straighter, feeling unaccountably light-hearted. For the first time, she looked at the other girls with fondness, instead of latent competition. The other girls noticed her nearly imperceptible motion and - with the synchronization that had already been trained into them - beamed at her.

Natalia beamed back.

* * *

Natasha’s final step lands her directly in front of the tank, and she instantly sees that she failed again. The man in the cryotank is as deathly still as she remembers him, two decades and an entire lifetime ago. Rationally, she knows that the girls’ shuffling steps had never succeeded at waking him up.

Irrationally, she’s disappointed.

Natasha idly wonders if their dances always failed because they had been taught a bastardized Khorovod, and westernizing the dance had somehow polluted its efficacy. The dance never actually worked, but the girls hadn’t stopped trying: enacting the call of spring and hoping that it somehow took. 

In retrospect, it’s such embarrassing, _childish_ thinking. Really, these impractical thoughts should have been trained out of her (vacuous) head.

She tugs her robe back on and cautiously creeps out of the lab while contemplating a second, more sobering thought. Once upon a time there were six of them in the circle dance. Now, she’s the only one left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the timeline-inclined types: the Reagan administration publicly acknowledged its complicity in the [Iran-Contra affair](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Contra_affair) on 3 November 1986. I assume the Soldier was sent to strong-arm [Mehdi Hashemi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehdi_Hashemi) into leaking intelligence.
> 
> "ты крепка как мрамор" is the translation used in _[Not Easily Conquered](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4289208)_ , but it has the connotation of "you are as strong as marble" and I wanted something more artsy-fartsy. Plus it didn't flow quite as well when spoken. Plus I found out that "ты создан из мраморa" actually appears in two(!) published translated works and Iamreallyjustgraspingatstrawsnow.
> 
> cлабый, вялый, and херовый are pronounced “ _slabyy_ ," " _vyalyy_ ," and " _kherovyy_ ,” respectively. That first one is awfully similar to [Madame B.’s](https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Madame_B.) lines in Age of Ultron.
> 
> The [Khorovod](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khorovod) is a Slavic circle dance with strong folk roots. It features prominently in Stravinsky’s _The Rite of Spring_ as a [paganistic ritual](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rite_of_Spring#Creation).


	3. Cortège du sage: Le Sage

If Headmistress was ever surprised that the girls picked up English more quickly than the other languages, she never outwardly displayed her shock. Tatiana was the one who recognized the foreign words at their very first English lesson, even with the words’ signature slur masked by sharp Russian overtones. They whispered the foreign vocabulary to Drakov whenever Headmistress and the Handler were absent from their lessons. Sometimes Drakov frowned absently and fell into brooding silence, but more often than not he grinned and patiently corrected their floundering attempts at proper pronunciation. Natalia lived for his praise; all of them did.

“He is our Papa,” Yelena quietly told them at night, in the privacy of their sleeping room. They were all huddled in their trundle beds, but they all sat up and leaned in intently when Yelena spoke. If not for the aseptic decor of the room, they might even have been normal girls at a sleepover. They spoke English amongst themselves now, because of Drakov and because the guards did not understand the alien dialect.

“What is a papa?” Natalia wondered.

Ekaterina looked at her pityingly, “A Papa is someone who is good and takes care of you.”

“Headmistress is good and takes care of us,” Anna chimed in.

“Headmistress is sometimes mean,” Ekaterina countered - and the girls collectively shuddered, remembering the punishment Katya suffered that morning when she’d cried (she had dislocated her arm during training), “a Papa is _always_ good and kind and protects you from everything he can.” 

“Like Drakov did for Talia on the first day!” Yelena said firmly. “Talia did not get...umm...наказание.”

“Punishment,” Tatiana corrected her.

“Papa,” Anna rolled the word around, feeling it out on her tongue. “I do not think we should call him Papa with the guards there.”

“They would not know anyways.” Lilja, eager to follow Yelena’s lead, was quick to point out.

“He is our Papa,” Yelena insisted, and the matter was settled, the girls bundling themselves into their dingy sheets for the night. Natalia fell asleep while diligently practicing the word, mouthing 'Papa' silently. She liked having a Papa, she decided, because it would be nice to have someone who is always kind.

* * *

“You come here a lot at night?” 

Natasha lifts her head and unfolds herself, unwrapping arms from knees and fixing Sam with a mock-angry glare. “Wanda told you.”

“She did,” Sam says agreeably. He takes a seat next to her and reclines, tentatively resting against the frosty glass. “I’m not here to therapize you,” he goes on, “I just figured, since Clint and Tic Tac took the plea deal, you might need a friend.” He flashes an easy-going grin at her, then winces in regret; he’d aggravated the still-healing bruise mottling his cheekbone, a stark reminder of the Sokovia Accords. She is, for the briefest moment, knocked off-kilter by how _easily_ he opens up. As though he doesn’t even care that he’s leaving himself vulnerable. Who voluntarily offers that up to a Widow?

He shrugs, nonplussed, “I’m just the other guy who fought him with y’all. Thought that ought to matter some.”

She indicates the cryotank with a spastic little jerk of her head, “I’m just here standing guard.” It is a half-truth, and she delivers the line flawlessly, because Sam doesn’t need to know who she’s actually protecting. For good measure though, she changes tack: “I don’t think I’ve seen Steve come in here.”

Sam grimaces, “I tried to mention Barnes to him a few times the week we arrived here. All of a sudden, it’s like he doesn’t even want to think about the dude. It’s damn freaky, especially after how he wouldn’t shut up about him while we were out there chasing him down.”

Natasha doesn’t actually furrow her brow, but it’s a near thing. Instead of voicing her disapproval of Steve’s avoidance, she restrains herself to wryly observing, “Yeah, well, that’s just Steve without something to fight.” 

“Yeah, well, we all know what happened the last time he realized he had nothing _left_ to fight. The first time he thought Barnes ditched him for good.”

“He just needs something to do, then.”

“At least until Barnes wakes up,” Sam agrees.

* * *

“Ya gotta look out for each other.”

Natalia wobbled precariously and toppled over. Papa picked her up (with both of his hands) and gingerly set her back on her feet. He gestured airily to her - _try again_ \- then waited for her to regain her center of balance. Drakov had accepted his new parental designation with the practiced ease of taking a fresh cover identity, and he took his newest role very seriously, almost like it was as important as a mission. Natalia loved him for that. 

They were practicing takedowns, and Papa refused to let them try the move on each other, so they all queued up for a turn against his hands. She shifted into the ‘ready’ stance and waited. Lightning-quick, Papa’s flesh hand darted towards her unprotected right shoulder. She tried to grab his hand and turn his own momentum against him - just like they’d practiced - but he was much too quick. She froze, knowing he’d outmaneuvered her, and he flicked the unguarded spot with deliberate care.

Lilja giggled, “Papa you sound funny.”

Papa turned to smile beatifically at her. “I can’t help sounding weird, baby girl. You know it happens every few days.”

Anna took advantage of his momentary distraction to seize his metal hand then, scrambling to stretch her chubby arm around his wrist in vague semblance of a chokehold. The last few strands of their chatter ceased as Papa’s left arm jerked ominously. Natalia watched Anna’s brilliant ploy with bated breath. Papa himself didn’t even move, just contemplated Anna with a bemused expression. With some undignified fumbling, Anna managed to achieve a moderately secure hold. 

Papa carefully extracted his gleaming wrist from her grasp and, with his flesh hand, ruffled her auburn hair affectionately (Anna squawked in outrage when he mussed up her carefully-tied braids). He didn’t mention the fact that he’d stopped resisting partway through. “Ya did good today, girls.”

“I like Papa’s funny sounds.” Ekaterina stoutly picked up the thread of their conversation.

Papa huffed out a short laugh. It was low and quiet, and Natalia had to strain her ears to catch it, but it sounded wonderful and warm. “Sorry, doll. I can’t always sound like this.” He tapped at his temple with a chrome finger. “They gotta help me clean up here, ‘cause it’s a goddamn mess.” 

“You forget us after.” Natalia accused. “You come back and you don’t even remember us until the second day.”

Papa’s smile dimmed, sadder now, and abruptly Natalia felt like the cruelest child. She suddenly, miserably, wanted to apologize. “So promise me, girls. Ya gotta look out for your sisters-”

“No we’re not!” Yelena interrupted, prim and poised like a schoolgirl at lessons. “Headmistress says we came from different families, but we are all here to protect the glory of our motherland!”

“You _are_ sisters, ‘cause I’m your Papa, ain’t I?” Papa squinted at the far wall. Natalia looked, but she didn’t see anything there. “Don’t much need blood relation to be family.” 

His next words came haltingly, like he was struggling to recall a dream: “But if you’re the oldest, you protect your little sisters.”

They looked at each other then, the blatant confusion writ large on small faces. “But… мы созданы из мрамора,” Yelena ventured tentatively, made suddenly uncertain by the dichotomic ideologies.

Papa’s smile returned full-force, proud and indulgent. “You’re stronger than that,” he said softly.

* * *

“You know, I noticed that you never call him by his name.”

Natasha leans back lazily, peering up at Sam’s earnest face through her eyelashes. She doesn’t want to talk about this. “Well, he _did_ shoot me in Odessa. So maybe I just don’t feel as _friendly_ with him as I do with you,” she drawls, batting her eyelashes flirtatiously. 

Sam rubs the back of his neck, and she can see his blush spreading under his dark skin. “C’mon Nat, you can’t blame me for being starry-eyed. You’re a freakin’ Avenger!”

She tosses her head back and laughs full-throatedly then, keeping her body language open and relaxed to mirror his. “So are you!”

“I’m not Avenging. I’m just here in a world-saving capacity,” he snarks back, flashing her yet another grin. He’s relaxing into the back-and-forth of their banter, unconsciously - and helplessly - leaning into her space. She can see the gap between his front teeth.

 _Like a window into his damn soul_ , Natasha thinks despairingly. _Thank god he’s actually kind of vigilant_. _Not like Steve_.

“Forreal though, I just wanted you to know. Whatever your history with him.. We’ve got your back. No judgement. You got a family in us, okay?”

So he thought the big, bad Soldier had her too terrified to even invoke his name, like some sort of Soviet Voldemort. Involuntarily, a hysterical giggle escapes from her. That’s fine; she knows that Sam will interpret it as fear. It’s second nature to feign weaknesses where she has none, by now.

* * *

The trouble with sisterhood was that none of them could quite recall when they were born. But they were good girls, and a promise to Papa was a promise they would keep.

After much discussion, they cooperatively agreed that Yelena was the most proficient, so she was assuredly the oldest. They weren’t very sure how to proceed after that first revelation, because they were all just the failures trailing after Lena. 

Ultimately, they decided based on relative height, because Papa had been clear that their assignment was protection detail, and they all felt safe, _sheltered_ , in Papa’s huge shadow. So, going by physicality alone, Lilja must be next oldest. They weren’t really sure who was taller between Ekaterina and Tatiana, so they decided that the pair must be twin sisters somewhere in the middle. Then, Anna was the closest sister to Natalia, and Natalia was the smallest sister, whose head barely reached Yelena's rapidly, inconveniently growing chest.

When they reported their sororal hierarchy to Papa, he beamed and fondly tousled their hair, his terminally-tight shoulders relaxing infinitesimally. It was the best smile any of them had ever seen.

“Protect each other, ‘kay?” He whispered lowly, like a secret just for them. “If those fuckers make me forget for good, I hafta know that you’ll look out for each other.”

“But you will always remember us, right Papa?” Anna whined, “Promise?”

His grin faltered momentarily, but Papa could never fail them. “I’ll promise if you promise me back,” he offered.

“We promise,” they chorused back, rhythmic and synchronized and _perfect_. And somehow, for a fleeting moment, Natalia can actually believe it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yelena, Ekaterina, Tatiana, and Anna are all lifted from _[The Terror of Knowing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13901379)_. Yelena displays the most aptitude for the training, which is unique in that Natasha is more commonly depicted as the quintessential Widow.
> 
> Lilja originates from _[We Were Like Lions](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12745218)_ , where her name is spelled in its diminutive form "Lilya".
> 
> Bucky has three younger sisters in _[Dreamers With Empty Hands](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12859722)_ : Becca, Jeanie, and Susan. During the lengthy period of training the baby Widows, he undergoes a mindwipe every three days in lieu of cryofreeze.


	4. Danse de la terre

The girls had become accustomed to the regular vivisections, for the most part. Like clockwork, they reported to the treatment room twice a week. Ostensibly, they were there to undergo check-ups, diligently designed to ensure that their young bodies were healthy in spite of the harsh training regimen. But sometimes, they received injections that burned like acid. Sometimes, it was painful. But they were good girls, good _specimens_ , and the doctors promised that it would hurt less if they were all well-behaved and _good_.

And then Subject Lilja had to go and cry. 

Subject Lilja cried when Headmistress arrived with a bevy of guards, ready to collect the trainees for their next examination. The subject was unwilling, and that was not tolerable under any circumstances. Headmistress was ultimately forced to issue the order, and then the guards approached to haul the subject from its bed. It seized the bed frame with the sort of inhuman strength that Papa sometimes exhibited, the kind of strength that made the guards tighten their grips on their guns and Papa’s Handler magically appear. 

First one, then two guards were assigned to the arduous task of compelling the subject from releasing its claw-like grip on the sterile bed-post. The two guards weren’t very good at their assignment, tugging on the subject with little grunts of exertion, but to no avail. Until the subject’s humerus yielded with an almighty, sickening crack. It yowled.

“нет! ты делаешь мне больно! Papa! Papa! спаси меня!”

Headmistress froze on her way out the door and turned slowly, awfully. “что вы сказали?” She demanded. The subject was sobbing brokenly. “ **что ты сказал, девушка?!** ”

The subject was a girl, Natalia remembered in a violent, nauseating lurch. Just like her. From the despairing sob that rippled through the other girls like a wave, they had remembered too. The subject was a girl. The subject was _Lilja_.

“захватить их,” Headmistress hissed. She looked demented, her eyes bulging out of their sockets and her mouth pursed, hollowing out her statuesque cheeks.

Natalia cowered with the others as the guards approached, but there was nowhere - not even for small girls - in the barebones room to hide. The guards frogmarched them deep into the compound, past the barre room, past the treatment room, and into a chamber with grimy floors and the stale smell of old urine. Unceremoniously, the girls were dragged to the hellish steel-framed chair waiting at the room’s epicenter. As they approached the contraption, Natalia heard tinny, synthetic whirring. She shivered involuntarily. The horrible thing was one of the doctors’ treatment beds grown thousandfold, because it was _alive_ somehow - hungry and gaping and lurking, like it was just awaiting an opportunity to rip them all apart. It was a terrifying though, and Natalia felt like her lungs had been submerged in ice water, the constriction forcing her to take shallow, quiet breaths. Even Lilja was strangely taciturn, with her arm dangling uselessly at her side.

Natalia had no idea how long they waited. Her heart beat hummingbird-fast, agonizingly extending her very perception of time. The increased energy expenditure accelerated her heat loss to the environment; oppressive cold seeped up through her bare feet, parasitically infecting her limbs and racing its way to her heart. She hated the cold, longing for the safety of her bed, longing even for the beds in the doctor room where she’d be poked and prodded and cut into, but at least it would be _warm_.

* * *

She’s back again and staring guiltily into his face. His lips are tinged powder blue, and she knows without a doubt that he will wake up cold and gasping and miserable, because that is how the process always works: the technicians always take advantage of his pliability, his temporary weakness while fresh out of cryo. It suddenly seems laughable that she once hated the cold - she's _Russian_ \- when he had quietly, resolutely, borne a decades-long winter.

She shakes away the stray thoughts, opting instead to examine him with her critical, practiced eye. Now that she looks again, his lips are ruddy and healthy, without even a shadow of blue, and there is a notable absence of frost decorating the walls of the cryotank. The tank is airy and bright; the only sign that he’s been frozen is the faintest bit of mist, curling amiably around him. He could have been sleeping. Why on earth did she think he was cold? 

Despite knowing him her whole life, she suddenly feels unmoored, because that single, simple observation is incontrovertibly at odds with everything she knows about him. Because he is a primordial creature of the earth, a veritable force of nature, and forces of nature are constantly in motion. Because she’s never seen him like this. 

She’d seen him indulgent, smiling, even laughing once. But never like this. Never fully liberated from the tension inherently caged into his body.

Never simply at peace.

* * *

Finally - _finally_ , Natalia's ears perked up, hearing the by-now familiar tread of boots on concrete, stalking purposefully down the hall. “Papa will come and save us,” Yelena nervously whispered, too perturbed by the exercise and its deviation from everyday protocol to spare any concern for minding her words and the familial secret she’d just revealed to the room at large. Her quiet murmur wafted through the silent room, mingling with still air and diffusing that much further. Headmistress narrowed her eyes, but thankfully, no reprimand came.

Natalia childishly craned her neck around to watch for Papa’s arrival. The Handler waltzed into the room first, waving his arms around and shouting passionately, but Natalia only had eyes for her Papa. There he was, skulking behind the Handler with his gaze stubbornly fixed on the ground, an air of benign resignation settled over him like a second skin. Sudden warmth blossomed in Natalia’s chest, chasing away the dreadful chill in her limbs: _Papa is here now_ ; _they are safe_. 

But Papa stiffened when he caught sight of them, forcing the subdued procession to halt. A muscle twinged irately in his cheek. A guard, then two, then four rushed over, yanking and pushing at Papa. But no amount of guards proved capable of compelling him to march those last few steps to the metal monstrosity of a chair. 

“снести стену, говорит он. как дебил!” The Handler was still ranting and gesticulating animatedly. He noticed the timid lineup at last, “что это такое?”

“наказание,” Headmistress spat out testily. The Handler smirked at her superciliously.

“No,” Papa unexpectedly rasped. Both Headmistress and the Handler jumped. The guttural sound crescendoed wildly as Papa’s repetitions accelerated, growing increasingly panicked all the while: “No, _no_ , not in front of the girls-”

“спутник,” the Handler snarled, incensed by the undue interruption and his own lapse in composure. And impossibly, all that coiled, restrained force leached out of their father’s massive bulk. He sagged like a broken marionette, its strings cut. 

“You goddamn monsters,” he raged in defiance of his traitorous body. “They don’t gotta see this shit, they’re just little girls, they’re _my daughters_ -”

Warily, the attending technician pushed Papa into the chair and strapped him in. He resisted, impotent and yet still swearing: in French, Hebrew, Mandarin, and then languages she couldn’t even recognize, let alone parse. The leather was too-tight, and Natalia could see that the straps were strangling the veins bulging from Papa’s powerful yet impotent arms. The technician flipped a switch, and the machine whirred to life. Staticky crackling filled the room until she felt her teeth buzz and the fragile baby hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She helplessly grit her jaw against the electricity coursing through the air as Papa seized violently. 

He was screaming like they were shredding him apart, like he was dying. And the warm smell of piss was mixing with the scent of burning hair already permeating the room. She panicked, grinding her teeth until she tasted blood, knowing that Headmistress would punish her for wetting the bed again, but she wasn’t in bed, no-

And Papa was still screaming, until he suddenly wasn't. He collapsed into the terrible chair, his head lolling bonelessly. She stared, still trying to figure out if she’d wet herself, trying to remember how to breathe. Very distantly, she heard a faint sound. Someone was wailing, the sound thin and high-pitched. “You killed him! You killed Papa!” Yelena was howling in deranged horror.

And all Natalia could think of - in that moment when her Papa had just died, when her sisters were sobbing brokenly, when Headmistress was smirking triumphantly - all Natalia knew, with instant certainty, was that Papa didn’t sound like that; Papa sounded warm and caring and real, not like something out of her nightmares.

* * *

Tonight, the music in her head is turbulent and demanding, so her performance is nothing short of frenetic. Her body contorts wildly as she throws herself into the violent choreography with abandon. There’s nothing technical or refined about it: the _Danse de la terre_ is desperate and primal. It’s well-suited to her. She has no time to stop and consider her motions, to ruminate on her otherness - _The ceremony is necessary, for you to take your place in the world_. _I have no place in the world_. Thankfully, blessedly, there is only the dance, and it is disconcertingly wonderful to just stop _thinking_ , however briefly. 

It’s a relief, frankly, that she can still use her much-maligned body this way. Like a _prima_ ballerina’s feet, she’s been bloodied and broken down over and over and over. And despite the impossible odds, in spite of every time she saw him crippled and brought to his knees by a single trigger word, in spite of knowing full well that she was built exactly the same way: _she’s survived_.

She is struck by a sudden, inexplicable compulsion to wake him up and recite her epiphany to him: _what did you learn at lessons today_? The impulse is suffocating in its urgency, more compelling even than the jingoist commands buried deep in her subconscious. She has to wake him, lest he sleeps forever, wreathed in white like a fairytale princess inside that godforsaken tube, peaceable and monumental and _unalive_ , like a marble statue.

Lest he orphans her forever.

It’s almost funny that she’s been reduced to this state, because Natasha had aspired to be like marble once upon a time: perfect and eternal and glorious.

Or is she supposed to be stronger? She can’t quite remember.

* * *

Yelena was still weeping when the guards seized Papa by the arms and shoved him into the metal tomb behind the chair. His chrome arm slowly - oh so slowly - reached out to touch the tiny glass porthole carved into the coffin’s lid. His left hand never completed its journey. Papa’s eyes fluttered closed for the final time, a delicate layer of frost already weighing his lashes down. A metallic fingertip, arrested in suspended animation, partially obscured his face. He was so still. The panic that had burrowed ever steadily into Natalia’s belly reached a fever pitch. Distantly, she felt her mouth fall open. “Papa?” A child’s voice called plaintively. No response.

The subject echoed the father. It screamed as the other trainees’ lonely dirge finally stuttered and died, their throats long-since wrecked. It screamed as a guard seized its limbs roughly and bodily dragged it through the hall. It screamed as the guard bound its wrists with the newly installed cuffs on the bed frame, leather to match the ones used to restrain its father. 

Headmistress personally closed the door, her pleased leer just barely visible through the gap. The subject saw the smile, knew that it should rejoice because the smile meant it had done well. Illogically, it felt like it might vomit. The lock engaged with a sharp little click. 

Gradually, excruciatingly, the subject regained feeling in her fingers and toes. Oddly, there were none of the usual pins and needles. They just felt numb. The subject knew that she’d regained her hearing when she heard muted sobbing and clinking. The other girls were shifting in their own beds. She wished she couldn’t hear them. She wished she couldn’t feel the hot liquid splashing down her face. Papa had protected them one last time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On 12 June 1987, Reagan delivered his famous challenge in Berlin: “Mr. Gorbachev, [tear down this wall!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tear_down_this_wall!)”
> 
> The idea that the Soldier’s relationship with the chair provides integral - even formative - lessons to the girls comes from _[I'll build a house inside of you](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4351673)_.
> 
> The brief lines: "The ceremony is necessary, for you to take your place in the world. I have no place in the world." are from [Natasha's flashback](https://youtu.be/JizbPev_Qz4?t=141) in Age of Ultron.
> 
> Stravinsky conceived the _[Danse de la terre](https://youtu.be/_QZXrPJGLJ0?t=1110)_ as a ritualistic, pagan circle dance, wherein the dancers sanctify and become one with the earth. It ends in a "blunt, brutal amputation."


	5. Introduction

Headmistress had taken a more vested interest in the girls recently, which was a novel experience. She arrived at their sleeping room at precisely 2300 every night. To train them in unity, she said. The exercise was call-and-response, and she sometimes even praised them when they parroted the correct parts back:

“I taught the Soldier when he was child like you. **If you are good girls, you will grow strong like him.** ”

and

“Grow quickly, my little spiders. **Our motherland needs strong protectors to defend her interests.** ”

and

“The ceremony is necessary, **for you to take your place in the world.** ”

The nightly incursions made Natalia’s head hurt. Headmistress’s heavily accented English was difficult to understand, and reciting their part in turn always made Natalia’s skull ring uncomfortably. But Headmistress was right, as always. It would be wonderful to grow up as strong as Papa, because he had been strong enough to protect all of them, and Papa had been very clear about their duty to protect each other when he was gone. 

Although she wasn’t quite sure who she would protect, since she was the smallest sister. But she trusted that Headmistress would make her useful - would make them _all_ useful.

* * *

Wakanda was generous to her and hers, but Natasha’s greatest weapon has always been her command of illicit information. And admittedly, her easy-access sources currently lie decimated by the loss of SHIELD, and again by the mess in wake of the Accords. _It was inevitable_ , she muses - tamping down on her annoyance as she encounters yet another security device, as she sneaks into Shuri’s private lab, _that it took so long for the opportunity to do a proper sweep_. The Dora Milaje were far too vigilant. Perhaps Okoye is driving them harder in the wake of the Wakandan civil war, but Natasha has a sneaking suspicion that the Dora Milaje are perpetually watchful and eagle-eyed, like the apex predators they were.

Luckily for Natasha, she’s taken months to establish herself as a fixture in Shuri’s domain, particularly during the wee hours of the morning when no one else is around. Even if someone were to happen across her illicit activities, they wouldn’t bat an eye at seeing her meandering down for yet another lonely vigil. They needn’t even know that she is making a quick detour tonight.

Striding briskly to Shuri’s central workspace, Natasha could have sighed in happiness. Shuri never turns off her workstation, which means all that information is freely accessible. It’s so much easier than the subterfuge - and the accompanying fallout with Steve - necessitated on the Lemurian Star. 

She runs her fingers through her newly bleached-blonde hair, wincing as the dehydrated strands rustle in protest. Regretfully, it’s part of her new cover.

(And also to reinforce her mask around her team. She’s become sloppy of late, if she’s being totally honest with herself.)

Navigating the unfamiliar database is somewhat painful with her rudimentary grasp of Wakandan, but it’s simple enough to comb for keywords. She feels faintly discomfited at the prospect of taking advantage of their hosts’ magnanimity (and wouldn’t that be a fun conversation with Steve if she got caught), but she finds that she doesn’t really care, not really, in the grand scheme of things. Protecting her people is - has always been - far more important, and she requires _data_ for that task, squishy feelings of camaraderie and gratitude aside. She’s a goddamn _professional_.

Once the files are collated and stored on her secure device, she retreats to her room to begin the meticulous process of hand-transcribing the ill-gotten intel.

* * *

Lilja’s arm was re-broken two weeks later. The bone had healed wrong, as misaligned as the INF Treaty, because Lilja was stupid and hadn’t brought it up to Headmistress and how was Headmistress supposed to know if you don’t tell her these things, stupid girl? It certainly seemed to pain Headmistress as much as it had Lilja, because the girl’s prolonged frailty appeared to personally offend her.

“нет!” She snapped. “херовыaя девушка!”

Lilja’s lower lip wobbled dangerously, but she managed to keep from crying again. Headmistress always reverted back to Russian whenever her tone lost its honeyed timbre and grew steely with threat. All the girls knew better than to invite Headmistress’s ire when she was in this mood; ignoring the tells meant inviting punishment.

Yelena ( _my eldest sister_ , Natalia reminded herself silently) stepped forward bravely. She didn’t speak a single word, as Headmistress generally preferred that they silently reflect on their own failings at these times (although sometimes, she administered their punishments with an air of disappointment that they were such bad girls). With feline confidence, Yelena shifted into the ‘ready’ stance, overtly challenging Lilja.

Headmistress watched the two girls square off with subdued interest. Her plum-colored lips were still puckered sourly in displeasure, but she nodded curtly. Yelena made the first move. She charged, aggressively targeting Lilja’s injured side. In her haste, she had clumsily telegraphed her intent. Her guard opened wide as she threw her full bodyweight into a wild punch. It was an uncharacteristic mistake for their cohort’s frontrunner.

But Headmistress didn’t seem to notice, because she practically purred when Lilja smoothly cartwheeled on her uninjured arm, cleverly taking the opportunity to kick Yelena upside the chin. Yelena staggered back from the impact, pale hands clutching at her face.

“отличный, Лилечка.”

Lilja looked utterly shocked that she had actually scored a solid blow, and - furthermore - had been _praised_ by Headmistress. She started towards her older sister, palms already spread solicitously. And stopped when Yelena shook her head minutely. Lena’s lovely blonde tresses had come loose during the altercation, and they now hid the tiniest of winks. Her eyes were melted chocolate, not Papa’s grey-blue - like the summer sky - but Natalia thought they looked just as warm.

“ты создан из мраморa.”

Yelena and Lilja received no punishments. Papa would have been proud.

* * *

It’s grueling work to translate so much Wakandan text. She can’t afford to use technology for fear of leaving an electronic trail, so she works by hand. Natasha is under no illusions: her little stunt with T’Challa in the hangar hardly serves to ingratiate her to their hosts. She doesn’t trust them, and they would never trust her. Tit for tat.

She’s overtaken by a burgeoning sense of foreboding at the translation. Red Room. красная комната. Mortifyingly, her heartbeat quickens without her express permission, the innocuous lub-dub swelling into a veritable throb, pounding against her eardrums with the inescapable force of a tidal wave. She can feel her diaphragm palpitating, faster and faster and faster. _Oh_ , she realizes, _I’m hyperventilating_. 

Grimly, she catalogs the reaction: recognizes it and files it away for later reference. She can do that much at least; yes, she will just recognize her own psychosomatic tells and set them aside for later clinical study, like she's just another target.

She’s not _compromised_ , she’s _not_. She can finish the damn mission.

Feverishly, she races through the document, transcribing with redoubled urgency. What scant intel the War Dogs had managed to accrue is reassuringly superficial; there’s nothing she doesn’t already know. Although…

Well, she supposes it’s hardly surprising, given the clandestine nature of the Black Widow program. She doubts Headmistress had ever gone to the trouble of digitizing the old records anyways, and so much of the paperwork had gotten lost amidst the fall of the USSR. Even the old SHIELD records on her were scant: she’s become more or less a ghost story. Like the man in the tank. 

She’d reached the end of the report in a blur. The War Dog had included a conclusion: a final analysis detailing the Red Room’s _modus operandi_. Natasha peruses it quickly, her mouth slanting in distaste. The ghosts were designed like guns with the safety perpetually on: inherently deadly and fundamentally gelded, all at once.

She sets the report aside, feeling sick.

* * *

Ekaterina and Tatiana returned from their overnight mission in Schirnding shamefaced and cringing. Headmistress graced them with a predatory leer even as she spoke her honeyed words: “Tanechka. Katyushka. My little spiders, you did well. It is not your fault that the man is an idiot. You may leave after dance training today.” 

Dance training today was _Petrushka_. Natalia loved it - loved the poor little puppet swinging helplessly, perpetually at the mercurial whims of his uncaring creator - loved how he always tried his very best to impress the Ballerina in spite of the fact that he wasn’t even _real_ , being only a puppet brought to life by magic…She loved dancing Petrushka's steps, his joints always loose and disjointed in stark contrast to the Ballerina, who was perpetually rigid and _en pointe_ , as though she were constantly walking a tightrope, unsettlingly complacent about the fact that she lacked free will. 

She thought, privately, that poor Petrushka deserved better than the spurious Ballerina.

Headmistress was true to her word, and two guards arrived after _Petrushka’s Cell_ to collect Katya and Tanya. “почему привет,” One of the guards grinned toothily.

They were _staring_ , and it was making Natalia squirm. Drakov had been incredibly focused, but his constant intensity never settled on any of them for long; his mind was constantly drifting and he would often break off mid-sentence, one time even stopping right as he got to the exciting bits of a lecture on the finer arts of assassination. Natalia remembers throwing a tantrum about that. And Headmistress, on the other hand, was so contemptuous of directly supervising the girls that - most days - she hardly even spared them a glance, let alone acute scrutiny.

But the two guards reminded her of the doctors’ examinations during modifications and treatments. She’s never been so closely watched outside the doctor room, and yet here the guards were: inspecting her as though she were a bug under a microscope. She fidgeted uncomfortably.

Headmistress cleared her throat impatiently.

“уж, давай.” The second guard seized Tanya without further ado. His meaty fist dwarfed her rail-thin arm easily. He pulled her forcibly from the barre room, and Tanya went - somewhat reluctantly, without even a ‘ _see you later_ ’ for her sisters. The other guard followed, callously dragging Katya.

The rest of their day was hard. Usually, Natalia loved the afternoons because she loved the weapons training block: loved the faint scents of oil and gunmetal, loved how they reminded her of Papa. But there was no weapons training today. Instead, they sparred endlessly, battling against bruises and torn muscles under Headmistress’s discerning regard.

By the time the battered quartet of girls trundled to their sleeping room that night, they were dead on their feet. Natalia struggled to prop open her drooping eyelids, and she barely paid attention to the two guards leaving just as the girls filed in. What she did notice though, was the strange musky scent cloying the chamber. She wrinkled her nose, trying to reduce the flow of air into her nostrils. 

Headmistress swept into the room for the nightly exercise. “поторапливаться,” she snapped, already impatient.

Ekaterina and Tatiana were already chained into their beds. Obediently, Natalia laid down to be chained in her own. Peering from the corners of her eyes, she saw Headmistress’s hands daintily drift into her vision, reaching for the cuffs. Natalia shivered from the dual frigid sensations: first Headmistress’s icy fingertips, then the cold metal of the restraints. She was oddly sad about that. _They should be leather_ , she thought mutinously, not quite knowing why she felt so vehement about the material comprising the handcuffs. 

She’d tried to bring up her dislike for the handcuff material before, but her complaint always seemed to make Lena cry. She probably just liked that the leather had been softer than metal anyways, because the leather cuffs had always left her feeling inexplicably comforted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The [Geneva Accords of 1988](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Accords_\(1988\)) were signed on 14 April between Afghanistan and Pakistan, with the United States and the Soviet Union acting as their respective guarantors. As a result, the USSR began withdrawing troops from Afghanistan on 15 May that same year, although each superpower continued to supply arms to the Mujahideen and Najibullah.
> 
> The [Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate-Range_Nuclear_Forces_Treaty) was ratified on 1 June 1988. It heralded the warming relations between the two superpowers.
> 
> On 7 November 1989, the newly installed [Krenz government](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egon_Krenz#Opening_of_the_Berlin_Wall) met to revise the set of rules governing emigration at Schirnding, a newly designated special crossing point on the East Berlin-Czechoslovakian border. The rewording gave the semblance of increased liberty while in actuality sustaining existing laws: it notably stipulated that permission to travel abroad would be permanent once attained, but that East German citizens could only _apply_ for that permission. The completed cosmetic revisions were sent to party figurehead [Günter Schabowski](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BCnter_Schabowski) on 9 November. In a comedy of errors, Schabowski announced the changes that same day, prompting thousands of East Berliners to congregate at the Berlin Wall. Without ample time and warning to reinforce the borders, the unprepared border guards simply allowed the crowd through.
> 
> The girls’ [dance](https://youtu.be/HzcsW-_RSjM) is from the ballet [_Petrushka_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrushka_\(ballet\)), which is a tragic tale of self-determination starring the eponymous Russian stock character. It is another early Stravinsky composition. Of note is the [Petrushka chord](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrushka_chord), a dissonance created by playing two distinct major (happy) triads a tritone apart. Historically, this [tritone interval](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritone#Historical_uses) has been associated with evil.


	6. Cercles mystérieux des adolescentes

When Yelena’s menstruation failed to arrive for the second consecutive month, Headmistress gathered the spiderlings just outside the doctor room. Natalia watched mutely as Yelena was wheeled towards them on a gurney. She seemed disconcertingly small and vulnerable in the knee-length smock, with only a thin layer of paper acting as a barrier between her skin and the chilled metal. Her wrists were cuffed (metal, not leather) to the cart legs, but she seemed compliant and subdued and distant: like Papa had been.

“Yelena is graduating early today,” Headmistress intoned, her velvety voice settling over them like a physical caress. “No man will ever have power over her again. She will be made of marble.”

Natalia was used to admiring Lena. She was used to being happy for Lena, used to wishing she could be more like Lena, because Lena was their eldest sister, the very best of them all, because Lena _deserved_ their admiration. What Natalia was _not_ used to, was the overwhelmingly wild impulse to rip Lena off that gurney and take her place. She’d never wanted to _be_ Lena so intensely before. She was very glad for the looming presence of Headmistress, her soothing tones a welcome distraction from the ugly, forbidden thoughts. Because Lena deserved her graduation, she _did_.

As she rattled past, Yelena met her sisters’ eyes for a fleeting moment. Yelena’s own eyes widened in horror, and she quickly looked askance. Natalia felt so, so hurt.

* * *

Some nights, the guards forgot to chain the girls to their beds. It must have been an unimportant chore, because Headmistress hardly cared enough to scold the guards for the occasional oversight. But the difference was very significant to the girls. Every time the guards forgot, the girls could sneak out of bed. It was laughably easy to ghost through the compound, because they were trained well, trained to be spiderlings. And it was alright as long as they were back in their room come dawn.

These nighttime adventures were precious to them, because they could finally go to visit Papa in his icy coffin. And there were never guards in his room. 

There were never guards in Papa’s room.

* * *

Yelena didn’t take her graduation well. She held her stomach for days after, her eyes often welling up with unshed tears. The other girls watched their eldest sister uncharacteristically struggle through her _plies_.

Being second oldest made Lilja solicitous. “Lena…” She began uncertainly when Headmistress paled and left the barre room, having been summoned urgently by a winded guard. This happened every few weeks, and the girls knew by now to continue practicing in her absence.

“What?!” Yelena snapped irritably. Pain was etched onto her fey features, turning her feral. It scared Natalia, like her sister was turning into Headmistress in a temper.

Lilja, however, was already stronger and tougher than the rest of the girls; she was second oldest, so she must also be strong for the little ones. “Lena, let me partner with you this time. Let me cover you until you heal.”

Yelena turned away, “I’m the oldest, that’s my job.” Her expression was resolute. Then she added, whispering so softly that Natalia could hardly even hear the two quiet words: “Papa said.”

“Let me help.” Lilja repeated, just as soft. Her stormy grey eyes, so much like Papa’s, were sad at the mention of their deceased father. 

Yelena ignored her and stubbornly attempted a _battement jeté_ , falling to the ground with a strangled grunt. She clutched a pale hand to her side, grimacing in obvious pain. 

“We are Papa’s daughters too.”

Yelena hesitated, clearly reluctant to deviate from Papa’s final assignment. Slowly, she looked up and met Lilja’s eyes. And like a balloon with a hole cut into its heart, she deflated under Papa’s gaze.

* * *

It had been clever Tatiana’s idea.

“You know…spring comes after winter.” 

As one, the clutch of spiderlings looked at her expectantly. The cryotank’s eerie blue luminescence painted their small faces pale and white. They were perfectly coordinated now, thanks to Headmistress’s nightly efforts. мы созданы из мрамора. They are nearly statuesque, like the man entombed in the tank.

Tatiana seemed nervous, faced with all her sisters’ steady gazes. Her already timid voice quieted in a _morendo_ even as her words steadily quickened in excitement. In the shadow of the looming cryotank, she was almost a normal girl, whispering secrets to her sisters so their Papa wouldn’t hear. “They always tell us that the dance is for spring.”

* * *

The girls tensed with heightened awareness. They were in the middle of their morning barre exercises, and they weren’t supposed to stop. And yet they did: watching with identical sullen, wary expressions as every last one of the compound’s guards filed in. The guards lined up in an approximation of a semicircle - nowhere near as perfect as the girls' Khorovod circle, of course - and settled into messy parade rests. Their bearing was improper, but their comportments were impassive and stony when Headmistress reamed them shrilly: “You dare! These girls are valuable; they are each worth ten of you!” 

Natalia privately wondered why Headmistress bothered shouting at the guards in English, because they didn’t understand English, and it wasn’t like Headmistress to forget these details, no matter how seemingly inconsequential.

* * *

It had been a week since they last managed to visit their Papa. _En pointe_ , they tiptoed down to the cold room without much issue; only once were they forced to hide in a nearby room. They picked the lock and huddled behind the heavy wooden door as the Handler stalked by, angrily muttering under his breath: “-одолжил это, и тогда Чаушеску мертв..”

When he had passed, they crept into their Papa’s room.

“I think the dance is working,” Natalia boldly announced to her older sisters, pointing at the glass porthole framing their father’s frozen face.

The other girls crowded around to see. One by one, they took turns peering in.

“I think Talia’s right,” Ekaterina declared, hands on her hips. “There’s less ice.”

Tragic hope bloomed in Yelena’s eyes. She missed Papa the most. “Then let’s dance,” she urged.

* * *

Today’s training was different. For one thing, they were outside. The girls were absolutely jubilant at the sight of greenery. It was summer in the outside world, and leafy vines were happily flourishing on the archway, marking the entrance to the compound’s small courtyard. The sky above was lovely, blue-grey like Lilja’s eyes, like Papa’s eyes, and even though the crisp morning air was freezing cold, Natalia knew it would soon warm up more. She delightedly watched her own breath puff out in misty little clouds.

The girls assembled in a semicircle, as though it was nighttime and they were just dancing for Papa. Yelena and Lilja were motionless at the ring’s epicenter, waiting for Headmistress’s signal to begin. Headmistress nodded.

Lilja lunged aggressively. It was plain that she intended to end the fight quickly, to preserve Yelena’s still-poor health. Yelena blocked Lilja’s blows perfectly, but her side must have still been hurting her, because she failed to launch her counterattack. Lilja brought her right leg up for a high kick then, telegraphing her intent clearly.

She allowed Yelena’s right foot to hook her left ankle, and then Lilja went down hard. In a flash, Yelena had wrapped her arm around Lilja’s head. The fight was over. Lilja could not escape the chokehold. She patted Yelena’s arm gently, tapping out.

Headmistress said nothing.

Yelena and Lilja both looked at her, confused. 

Headmistress still said nothing, her implacable derision locked solidly in place. “ **You are made of marble.** ”

Yelena’s face had gone blank and slack, becoming curiously absent. Slowly, her movements halting and disjointed like a marionette with cut strings, she made as though to snap Lilja’s neck. Lilja gasped as her vertebrae creaked ominously. Her face contorted with betrayal and panic. 

But Yelena wasn’t strong enough to make a clean break, and she hesitated, confused. She looked down and met Lilja’s eyes. Papa’s eyes. 

The spell was broken.

Crablike, Yelena scuttled backwards - her nails scrabbling against the courtyard’s tiled floor with tinny clicks - and away from Lilja. Lilja’s head fell to the courtyard’s cobbled floor with a dull _thunk_ and she sat up, rubbing the back of her skull and glaring at Lena accusingly. She’d just _dropped_ her.

Yelena looked horrified. She’d retreated all the way to the blank compound wall, where no vegetation had managed to take root. There she knelt, staring at her own shaking hands. Natalia couldn’t figure out why Yelena was so scared, because Lilja had let her win, and now it would all be _fine_ -

“cлабый,” Headmistress intoned succinctly. Her pale, thin neck was quickly blushing red: a surefire sign of impending wrath.

Lilja looked up, completely taken aback. She’d covered for Yelena, so why?

Why was Yelena still in trouble?

Yelena stilled. Somehow, her hands stopped shaking. Slowly, painfully slowly, her entire body radiating defiance, she lifted her head and squarely met Headmistress’s gaze.

Headmistress sucked in a breath sharply. After a pregnant pause, she turned and swept out the vined archway. The vines seemed to rustle joyously in her wake, wickedly strangling the surrounding architecture and slowly, surely, choking out its very foundations.

* * *

That night, they danced for Papa with a newfound air of flushed victory. It was hardly the first time they performed the full Khorovod for him, but they had never performed with such confidence before. For the first time, it was _fun_ and not merely purposeful. There were six of them in the circle dance, and it was the perfect number to form the small ritualistic ring. As an added bonus, their wide-ranging heights didn’t much matter for this dance; Yelena had to stoop a bit and Natalia had to tiptoe more, and it was alright.

When they completed the ritual dance, they collapsed in a heap of exhilarated giggles at the base of the tank, thin arms wrapping loosely around thin shoulders, coltish legs sprawling this way and that.

Yelena seemed to be deep in thought about something. She stood up, extricating herself from the pile of girls. She’d grown so much that, when she stood on tiptoe, she could see into the porthole. She could see Papa’s face without being hoisted on another girl’s shoulders.

“Papa,” Yelena whispered, and everyone else quieted down, listening intently. “Papa, I defied them today. I protected my sister.”

“Papa, are you proud of me?”

* * *

Natalia was still nursing a sprained ankle from the morning’s variations, and she didn’t want to train today. She sullenly brought up the rear of their little company, a column of girls marching single-file to the training room, each girl flanked by a pair of armed guards. Hearing Headmistress's approaching voice, the company halted; Natalia stood at attention with the others, the very picture of poise that Headmistress always demanded. Turning a corner, Headmistress came into view and

And Natalia _recognized_ the two guards at her side. A dissonant chord roared thunderously; it was so all-encompassingly loud that she barely heard their escort calling the girls back to order. 

_Oh_ , she realized. The roaring was the pounding thump-thump of her own blood, mercilessly forcing its way past the delicate fleshy structures in her ears. 

Breathe. In. Out. In. Out. She was overtaken by the wild urge to flee. But nowhere was safe. Not in the compound. Not now that she knew the two guards were still here. Wildly, she thought that she ought to warn Headmistress about the dangerous men lurking at her flank. Natalia opened her mouth.

And then her world shattered when Headmistress reached up with a beautiful, alabaster hand, tenderly caressing one guard’s face and stroking down his uniformed chest. Laughing openly, she allowed him to lean into her space intimately, whispering some private joke. Still chuckling, she looked back up and finally caught sight of the small platoon of girls. Her mulberry lips pursed in displeasure.

Natalia felt her escort pulling roughly at her arms. Meekly, she looked askance and allowed herself to be led away.

**ты создан из мраморa.**

**ты создан из мраморa.**

**ты создан из мраморa.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yelena’s nightmarish vision as she is wheeled in for her operation is the same as adult Natasha’s in [Age of Ultron](https://youtu.be/JizbPev_Qz4?t=129). I felt compelled to “fix” Whedon’s rationale for why sterilization (or “graduation,” as the Widows euphemise it) is such an enduringly traumatic experience for emancipated, been-through-hell-and-back Natasha. 
> 
> Sterilization does not necessarily arrest the body’s natural hormonal growth, although it is still a major surgery; this is why only 12-year-old Yelena undergoes the operation. Even a [full hysterectomy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysterectomy) would not trigger premature menopause so long as the ovaries remain untouched. Mortality rate of the operation is several times higher if the patient is pregnant, and undergoing the procedure before age 45 is associated with fivefold-increased long-term mortality. 
> 
> The [Romanian Revolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_Revolution) is notably the only instance when an Eastern Bloc country violently overthrew its Communist leaders. [Nicolae Ceaușescu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu) (the general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party until December 1989) was executed along with his wife, although it is implied that the Soldier did the dirty work.
> 
> The courtyard scene alludes to the [1937 Red Room Training Scenes](https://youtu.be/1Npx6gReF1Y?t=9) from Agent Carter.


	7. Glorification de l'élue

“I’m going to run.”

Natalia’s head whipped up. Yelena was hunched beside Anna, carefully focused on lacing up her pointe shoes. Her lips had barely moved; Natalia wasn’t quite sure that Yelena had even spoken, because the din in the warm-up room was tumultuous and _annoying_. Small girls with exotic, dark complexions yammered away in Portuguese when they _should_ have been focusing on their barre exercises. For the twentieth time, Natalia turned to glare at the other ballerinas-in-training.

Anna was chewing her lip in consternation, “But you’re the best. Headmistress says that you are the most like Papa when she trained him.”

“And now Papa’s the only one left,” Yelena replied in an undertone, still refusing to look at either of them.

Was it true? Had Papa eaten all his kin? Yelena was always so far ahead of the other girls. She would surely be the best of them all; and the rest of them would die, cannibalized by her brilliance. 

Was it true? Was Yelena destined to devour the rest of them? 

Natalia didn’t know, because she is only the littlest and stupidest sister. Instead, she shared a worried look with Anna.

Still determinedly ignoring them, Yelena moved to grab their portfolio, which held both their qualifications for joining the Companhia de Dança youth classes and the intelligence that would bring down a President. _To be delivered to a greedy worm of a man_ , Headmistress had said.

And Natalia knew right then that she was greedy, too, because she didn’t want Yelena to leave them like Papa had. She knew, very well, that she was a greedy little spider.

“Lenushka-” Anna started.

Yelena stood abruptly, flicking her long ponytail - the shining blonde dyed dull-brown just for this mission - over her shoulder. She took a moment to double-check that the files were complete. “Let’s just focus on the mission.”

* * *

“You know…” Shuri says, light and faux-casual, not even looking up from her station where she’s focusing on some groundbreaking technological marvel or other. “I can tell when someone’s been in my workspace.”

Natasha holds herself perfectly still and keeps her breathing steady. Direct eye contact implies honesty. Wide eyes convey sincerity. Biting the lip suggests contrition. “I’m sorry. I needed to Google something, and your console was closer than my room.” She throws in a slow-growing smirk at the tail end of her apology. Her performance is perfect, as always.

“You’re not sorry at all,” Shuri says firmly. She catches Natasha’s eyes. 

And in the end, it’s Natasha who looks away first.

* * *

She’d forgotten what it felt like, to be chained down into a bed.

The cold touch of metal handcuffs made her skin crawl, made her anxious, made her crane her neck back, trying to catch a glimpse of the guards that she knew had to be coming. The room was completely silent; the other girls seemed to be holding their breaths in trepidation, just like her.

But instead of guards, the doctors arrived. There were three of them; they meandered in, arguing all the while, one pushing a rattling cart covered with surgical instruments and syringes. That was odd; the doctors never came to the sleeping room, because they preferred to carry out their macabre experiments in their sterilised domain, where they had all their instruments within easy reach.

“солдат добился этого.” One lab coat muttered to another.

“нам придется их смотреть,” the one pushing the cart chimed in, already scowling at the prospect of holding overnight vigil in the girls’ bare room. There were deep-set bags under his eyes, which were currently wrinkled in annoyance at the sheer indignity of playing chaperone. His hands worked deftly as he spoke, readying the syringes with a fluorescent blue liquid. He held each injection up to eye level for inspection, flicking the needle’s point to expel any air. A stray droplet flew off and landed on the surgical paper lining the tray. The spot sizzled, and an acrid tang wafted up with the smoke.

When he finally slipped the needle point under Natalia’s skin, it burned like agony and tasted like electricity.

* * *

“You could have just asked.”

Natasha gapes at Shuri, who is entirely absorbed by her screens, eyebrows furrowed in concentration and completely unaware that her flippant remark has initiated a full-scale meltdown on Natasha’s end. That is, until she notices that it’s been a whole ten seconds and Natasha still hasn’t reacted. 

Shuri impatiently looks up and - seeing that Natasha is struck dumb - shrugs carelessly, “So what if you found the files about the War Dogs? Wakanda is perfectly capable of protecting itself. More importantly,” and here her face turns sly, “I found it veeeeeery fascinating that you focused on that particular report.”

Natasha’s throat is so, so dry; she is suddenly a small girl, bracing herself for Headmistress’s reprimand, because she was _sloppy_. She opens her mouth to refute Shuri, to categorically and unequivocally deny the incriminating facts: that she infiltrated Wakandan intelligence _and got caught_.

To her horror, nothing comes out. 

She licks her lips, already castigating herself for the nervous tell, and tries again: “I really don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her voice is shaking because she’s been caught, she’s cлабый and this means mission failure-

“Nonsense, I have a cute little program attached to all our files. If they get copied anywhere, it worms me into the system.” Shuri sounds smug. “I know exactly how long you spent reading each page in those files about the Red Room.”

She’s cornered. No one’s exposed her like this, not since the week she first arrived at SHIELD, when she was still convinced that she’s somehow fallen down the rabbit’s hole into Wonderland because _nothing made sense_. Natasha subtly shifts her weight, instinctively getting ready to bolt.

“Calm down,” Shuri says sharply, her voice suddenly jumping an entire octave in alarm, “I did say you could just ask.”

Natasha flounders. It’s not supposed to be this easy. She isn’t quite sure what to do or say, now that she’s confronted with the fact that, impossibly, _Shuri trusts her_. “You shouldn’t trust me with this intelligence,” she manages to croak out.

“It’s not about trust,” Shuri explains, rapid-fire and already back in her element now that Natasha isn’t about to do something stupid. “They’re _about_ you. And anyways, I have more files that you didn’t find, you silly spy. You can't access anything past the absolute surface level without kimoyo beads of your own. And before you try whatever it is you think passes for _hacking_ again, I’ve already sent the rest of them to your primitive device. You’re welcome.” She sighs after the long spiel, resting her hands on her hips, “I don’t know how you colonizers ever manage to get anything done.”

* * *

Natalia’s voice had already petered out four hours ago, unable to keep up with her prolonged shrieks of pain. She had continued weeping brokenly for another two hours, until she was too dehydrated to produce anymore tears. An hour ago, even her quiet whimpers had trailed off.

So she was powerless, her vocal chords stripped and hoarse, when Lilja began to seize.

She’d been staring at her sisters dully, each of them clinging to reality as best they could despite the burning veil of agony. At first, Natalia was terrified that her sisters had been poisoned (even though, theoretically at least, it wasn’t even possible to poison the spiderlings) when the navy webbing had latched onto their skin, and only bloomed in intensity as each hour passed. By the time she’d stopped screaming, her horror had shrunken into a disconnected sense of morbid fascination.

The doctors were deep in slumber when Lilja began to seize.

And Natalia’s horror returned in a steady intravenous drip when _the doctors didn’t notice_.

She tried to scream, to wake them up, to do _something_. All that came out was a hoarse, tinny, _pathetic_ grunt.

A low, clear groan, the same sort of sound Papa had made when his head lolled.

No, no, no, _no_ , NO-

A little squeak. Anna had noticed too.

A horrible rasp. Yelena.

Lilja was bucking now, her contortions brutal and uncontrolled. Her eyes had rolled back into her own skull, her jaws were dripping bloody foam, _and the doctors still didn’t notice_ -

A violent, metallic grinding. Ekaterina and Tatiana had yanked on their shared bedpost with wrists that trembled from pain and exertion.

A doctor woke with a snort.

And then all hell broke loose.

* * *

Natasha feels ill. The girls had always suspected, but to read about herself, how she was made and _unmade_ …

She’s reading in the cryotank’s shadow, side-by-side with Shuri, who is folded on the floor, anchoring Natasha to the present. Her steady accompaniment is stabilizing: she’s here in Wakanda, where the light is natural (not yellowed and dim) and the air is clear (not dusty and damp). She has both everything they had ever wanted and nothing at the same time.

“It’s okay if you need to throw up,” Shuri chirps, “just please be sure you do it in the bin, it’s _so_ much easier to clean up.”

Natasha laughs brokenly, and they lapse into companionable silence, watching the sky slowly brighten with beautiful pastel hues. 

“One of the girls is still alive,” Shuri says out of the blue, “aside from you of course. She's in Romania.”

Natasha has no idea what to say to that. Her mind feels like it’s splintering apart. Lena, it has to be Lena. She misses Lena so damn much that she can hardly breathe; she misses all her sisters so goddamn much; she misses her _fucking family_. 

_I can go to Romania_ , she realizes, _I can find Lena_ , _and then_ \- and the thought trails off, because she has no idea how to finish that thought: and then what? Go to Romania, find Lena and bring her in? She can't trust herself with that, not with her training talking, the disembodied, strict orders ringing in her ears - _kill the traitor_ , _take your place_ \- she could never, because it’s _Lena_ , and Lena’s the best - _kill her_ , _take her place_ \- no, she won't, she _can't_ , NO-

Shuri mistakes her silent meltdown for reflective rumination, which it is, but it's also _anything but_ \- “My brother offers Wakanda’s resources: they are at your disposal if you’d like to go and-” she continues excitedly.

ты создан из мраморa. Natasha abruptly speaks, unthinkingly, her mouth running on autopilot and wild adrenaline: “Did I ever apologize for what I did to him?”

“You mean how you shot him with your Widow-Bites?” Shuri sounds delighted. “It was hilarious! I was watching from his suit-cam!”

“I could have easily killed him while he was down.” Natasha says ruthlessly - _disguise your weakness_ : “you could have lost your brother, and it would have been my fault. ”

Shuri sobers quickly. “I almost did. Not then- later. If the Jabari hadn’t found him…” She trails off, narrowing her eyes in suspicion: “I know what you’re doing: you’re deflecting.”

Natasha holds up her hands in mock surrender: “Guilty.” She has this, she’s _in control_ -

“Fine,” Shuri sighs. “The civil war was _awful_. Eric drove us from the capital. We went up the mountains seeking asylum for Mother. We were certain that M’Baku would toss us right back down. Mother tried to offer _him_ the Heart-Shaped-Herb.” 

Shuri's face tightens, and Natasha sympathizes. She knows what it feels like, to always be passed over because _you aren't good enough_ , _you’ll_ never _be as good_.

 _I have no place in the world_.

“M'Baku wouldn't take it.” Shuri continues, chuckling. “Stickler for the rules, that one. Instead, he took us to T'Challa. My brother was comatose, frozen in…” she trails off again, eyes growing wide.

Natasha watches, nonplussed, as Shuri’s brilliant mind puts it all together: the Red Room files, the Accords incident, Natasha's near-nightly presence...

“When you shot my brother, you told him: ‘I said I’d help you find him, not catch him.’” Her voice is soft and pitying. “You didn't mean Captain Rogers, did you?”

Natasha finds that she hates being pitied almost as much as she hates Steve for being absent where he’s needed the most. “No,” she says curtly.

Shuri doesn’t try to engage her again. They simply sit together in silence until morning comes.

* * *

The guards buried Lilja’s shattered body later that day. The girls weren’t permitted to watch, of course. But the next time they returned to the courtyard, prepared to spar under Headmistress’s calculative, judgemental gaze, Natalia noticed a small plot of upturned dirt in the corner. That was it. That was all that remained of their vibrant, dynamic sister.

Natalia wondered if all of them would eventually be buried in the same unmarked graves.

The very next day - on the inauspicious date that marked the end of an era - Yelena ran. She didn’t speak a word of her plans to the leftovers, which was just as well because they were worthless and would only have been hindrances (Headmistress was incensed about losing her best spiderling: “she is a traitor to us all,” she snarled venomously). Natalia had thought she would be glad to be rid of Yelena’s overbearing shadow, glad to be rid of the traitor, but Yelena’s absence prickled like an open wound. Like Lilja’s absence. 

Two sisters were gone, vanished like the ghosts they were.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was at a loss for a mission the girls could undertake in São Paulo in the early 1990s, so my interpretation of the following events is pure conjecture. In 1989, [Fernando Collor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_Collor_de_Mello#Presidency_\(1990-1992\)) won the five-year Brazilian presidential term with overwhelming support; his agenda was focused on fighting corruption, controlling out-of-control inflation, and completing the transition from 21 years of military rule to civilian government. In May 1991, Collor’s own brother [Pedro](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_Collor_de_Mello) accused him of corruption in complicity with his campaign treasurer, [Paulo Farias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulo_Cesar_Farias). By September 1992, Collor was impeached and removed from office. Two years later, Pedro Collor died at age 42 of brain cancer; two years after that, Farias was murdered at age 50 in a “crime of passion.” I attribute these suspicious events to Red Room machinations, although quite honestly the U.S. likely stood to greater benefit. But please do not take my conspiracy theory as historically informed.
> 
> “Mission report, December 16, 1991.” The Soldier has been sent on various missions in the intervening years, unbeknownst to the girls. They received lowered dosages of the same serum [administered](https://youtu.be/qzLynKSGusU?t=88) to the would-be Winter Soldier candidates.
> 
> Yelena runs away to Romania in girlbookwrm’s timeline, where [she encounters Bucky](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14933804) many years later. I took the artistic liberty of lining up her escape with the [dissolution of the Soviet Union](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Soviet_Union) on 26 December 1991.


	8. Évocation des ancêtres

She runs into Steve, of all people, on her way down to the lab that night. He finds her just as she is reaching up to enter her access code. His gaze is level and measuring, and she is so strongly reminded of Headmistress that she feels the telltale headache already coming on - complete with murderous intent against enemies of the union - and she very nearly doubles over from nausea. In that fleeting instant, she _hates_ him.

But performing comes more naturally to her than living, than breathing, so she relaxes her face into its customary blasé mien and lets him pull her into one of the ready rooms. He shoves her against the wall unceremoniously and she’s struck with an overwhelming sense of _déjà vu_. Not this fucking shit again. He’s looming over her, leveraging his size as an intimidation tactic. She very nearly rolls her eyes.

“You’re upset with me.” It’s not a question.

“Don’t be silly Steve, why would I be upset with you?”

Her voice is deliberately light and taunting in spite of how much she doesn’t want to deal with him, doesn’t want to deal with _any_ of them, at least not after reading all those fucking files last night. Natasha keeps her past and present separate because it’s just easier on everyone involved. She knows, cerebrally at least, that she’s a really fucked up person with a metric fuckton of really shitty personal issues, but she still has to keep going and surviving and breathing, so she’d really appreciate it if everyone else could fucking respect that and leave well enough alone. Not that Steve ever does, because he's _Steve_ , and keeping his nose out of other people’s business isn’t in his fucking nature or some such shit.

Goddammit.

* * *

They weren’t quite sure how to dance the Khorovod with only four girls.

“This is stupid,” Natalia pounded her fists on frigid concrete. Although the other girls were just as frustrated by the obvious lack of progression, they only watched Natalia’s growing tantrum warily. “Four isn’t a circle, it’s a square.”

“It’s a circle if you think hard enough, stupid,” Anna teasingly cajoled.

Natalia was only minimally mollified. “Four isn’t a circle, but maybe five can be. If Lena was still here, we would have five,” she complained.

Tatiana frowned at that. “Stupid Talia,” she grumbled.

Natalia rounded on her angrily: “I am not stupid!”

Tatiana glared back. “Four or five or six: when we are together, we are a circle.”

Natalia opened her mouth to insist that four was only a _square_ \- not a circle - but Ekaterina interrupted. “That’s enough. Now stop arguing, Papa will be disappointed in us.” She stared at each of them in turn, and her imperious expression was so much like Headmistress’s that Natalia subsided reluctantly. 

“Now let’s try again,” Ekaterina said bracingly. “How about we do it in pairs, instead of sets of three?”

* * *

For all that he can be one-track minded, Steve is no fool. “I swear to God, Natasha.” He grits out, “I don’t know what it is I did, but whatever it is, I’m sorry.”

She studies him carefully and keeps her voice deliberately coquettish as she pulls a grin that (to her chagrin) is more feral than flirty, “Oh, I don’t know Steve. There are a lot of things I could be upset about. I threw _everything_ away to help you and your boyfriend escape justice, _after all_.”

For a split second, he just gapes at her. He looks hilarious, his mouth opening and closing like a fish, and if she wasn’t so fucking angry with him she might even have laughed. His gaze darts nervously - holding contact with her right eye, then her left - and then his eyes narrow in indignation. “You’re lying. That’s not what you’re angry about at all.”

So he’s finally wising up. Good for him. She meets him stare for truculent stare. He folds his arms across his ridiculous chest. “God, I thought we were past this. I can’t fix what I did wrong if you just keep lying to me,” he declares stubbornly. Self-righteously.

In hindsight, it is mortifying. If she wasn’t already so emotionally compromised, she might have noticed that Steve’s behavior is erratic. He simply _doesn’t_ physically antagonize his teammates like this; he’s never been a bully, no matter how passionate and strident he gets. And she - of all people - should be able to sidestep whatever’s eating at him with the grace of a matador deflecting a charging bull. But, maybe she _wanted_ this fight, wants to let loose the vitriol and resentment that’s been stewing inside her since _he_ chose cryo. Instead of Steve, instead of his _own damn daughters_ (but he _hadn’t_ , he hadn't had _a choice_ , she _knows_ that)...

So why does she still feel so betrayed?

“It’s always about you. You don’t even _care_ enough to visit him. To even _be_ with him.” She spits in lieu of confronting herself - with all her ugly inadequacies, her _weak_ feelings - viciously shoving at Steve’s midsection. “You haven’t stopped by here even once!”

He rocks back, more from shock at her unexpected venom than her show of strength. Instinctively, his hand grabs at her elbow to steady himself, and suddenly it’s all too much. Natasha tries to stand her ground, fighting between fury and horror. She’s a _Widow_ goddammit, _she_ hunts her unwary victims and chews off the heads they freely offer up to her. She’s long ago done away with any weaknesses, any feelings that might compromise the mission. She’s lied and seduced and weaponized her own body for so many years: first for Headmistress and then for Fury, so why?

Why now..?

* * *

A week later, and they still had not worked out a suitable way to replace Yelena and Lilja’s presence in the choreography of the Spring Rounds. What they had managed to work out, however, was how to fill the power vacuum left by the loss of their two oldest sisters.

With the oldest gone, leadership of their cohort went to the next eldest. And that was shockingly simple and efficient, until it wasn’t because Ekaterina and Tatiana were _twins_. It seemed a lifetime ago that they’d all decided so together.

In the end, they all deferred leadership to Ekaterina without a single word spoken on the matter, because she had grown to be the tallest and strongest with the wake of Yelena’s ousted reign, and because it seemed that discussing it aloud would have broken them to pieces all over again.

And certainly, Ekaterina was a good leader, just like Yelena had been (until she betrayed them all). Katya broke up their infighting with ease and authority. Except for that time she hadn’t, that time when Natalia had given in to the frustration of learning new choreography without Yelena.

(Natalia still hated her for running.)

“It’s all Lena’s fault,” she whined unhappily. “We would be able to dance if Lena was here.”

“Shut up,” Tatiana snapped at her after Natalia’s tenth complaint in as many minutes. “Shut up, shut up shut up _shut up_ -”

Anna stood by her Khorovod partner. “Why don’t you shut up, Tanya, since you like the words so much.” 

“Anna,” Ekaterina demanded, low and dangerous.

Barely castigated, Anna muttered mutinously: “You’re not her. You’re not Lena.”

And with a snarl, Ekaterina leaped at Anna, grabbing her long, free-flowing chestnut hair and _ripping_ , and then Anna was howling in pain and rage, her yowls (so much like Lena’s once upon a time in this very room, watching their father break apart) waking Natalia, and she sprang upon Ekaterina, scissoring with her gangly colt’s legs - made skinny and long by her most recent growth spurt - up, up, up to Ekaterina’s throat where she clamped down, as hard as she possibly could.

Ekaterina retched from the constriction, but she didn’t relinquish her death grip on Anna’s hair, whose cowlike eyes were welling with tears, and then Tatiana was throwing herself at Natalia, mercilessly tearing and scratching and biting at her legs, her hands, her _face_.

Natalia grimly held on, silent and inexorable. _Like Papa_ , she thought with startling pride.

And even when Headmistress demanded to know how they’d gotten their injuries, even when she made good on her threats of further bodily injury for their reticence. All of them bore their punishment with a certain determined pride; all of them maintained focus in spite of the agony.

Natalia was so proud of them that she could almost forgive Katya and Tanya.

* * *

She’s absolutely furious and her rage isn’t even directed at him. Of course she’s terrified. The last time she was so physically outclassed in such close quarters, she’d been a child chained to a bed. She immediately hides her terror behind a mask of incandescent rage - and the mask feels familiar, reminiscent of all those great many times when Ekaterina had failed to keep a leash on their clutch of spiderlings - but she’s too slow. Steve sees, and he pulls back his hand like he’s been burned. 

“Natasha…” He says slowly, rendered momentarily speechless by a Black Widow displaying emotion, however fleeting, _on her face_. Then his own face hardens with suspicion and jealousy: “So what? You’re the only one who cares enough to visit? Like how you’ve been visiting him just about every night?”

When she doesn’t rise to the bait, he continues bitterly: “I knew it. You and him have a history, and you know what? I don’t care, as long as he’s happy with you.”

“Happy?” She breathes lowly.

Steve doesn’t seem to hear her: “-and I’ll never know what you two went through together, and that’s fine, because I hope you guys found some measure of peace-”

She snaps. And then her voice is crescendoing, cascading uncontrollably. “You think there’s peace between us? What the everloving fuck-”

“And,” Steve’s yelling to be heard over her, “you swear just like him whenever you’re angry, don’t think I never noticed-”

“He’s _your_ best friend, and I’m just the poor schmuck he put a fucking bullet through. So why have _I_ visited more than you?”

“Yeah, why have you? What’s he to you?”

“ _Nothing_ , Steve, so don’t go fucking nuts-”

“Don’t call me crazy, don’t manipulate me, I’m not fucking stupid-”

“-just because I’m not actually the fucking heartless bitch you seem to think I am-”

“Bullshit, BULLSHIT-”

“And you know what else-”

“STOP! LYING!”

They’re practically nose to nose now, eyes skittering frantically across each others’ faces and chests heaving with futile rage. It’s the small window, the slightest reprieve Natasha that needs to reapply her stage makeup, slipping back into cool indifference with grace, like the _prima_ ballerina she is. There’s nothing she can fucking do about her pulse and breathing, but she can do this damn much, thank you. 

Steve watches Natasha retreat into her performance. His mouth tightens unhappily. With a frustrated snarl, he spins on his heel and storms out of the ready room.

Watching him go, Natasha unexpectedly realizes that the conflict between her and Steve is not a battle between opposing forces, but rather the repulsion of similar magnetic poles, because despite each of them desperately trying to hide behind their bravado, they have both been sent hopelessly adrift by _his_ absence. Have been for the past few months, in fact, hopelessly revolving around the slightest possibility that _he_ will return to safeguard them. They’re so _pathetic_. She’s suddenly glad they did this in the nondescript ready room and not Shuri’s lab. She doesn’t think she can bear the shame of having her emotions splayed out before him, his face accusatory and all-seeing in its frozen impassivity - like Doryphoros, perfection incarnate - witnessing all the glaring chinks in her childish emulation of his flawless marble façade.

Confronting Steve is like confronting her own impotence: he’s right there in front of her and she can’t do a damn thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The girls were presumably trained in the [Vaganova method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaganova_method), a distinctly Russian syllabus for learning classical ballet “in which the ‘basic’ or ‘preparatory’ forms are mastered before the dancer moves on to more difficult forms[…]It is understood that this strength-building requires time and consistent hard work.” It is the most popular methodology for instructing ballet students today.
> 
> As mentioned in the Chapter 2 notes, the [Khorovod](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khorovod) is a Slavic circle dance featured in [_The Rite_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rite_of_Spring). The [initial stages](https://youtu.be/_QZXrPJGLJ0?t=732) of the dance are performed by trios of girls _en pointe_. By [13:35](https://youtu.be/_QZXrPJGLJ0?t=815), you see that the dancers are starting to form circles of six.
> 
> [Doryphoros](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doryphoros) is a Classical Greek statue: although the original statue was cast from bronze in about 440 BCE, the marble copy dating from 120–50 BCE is the anointed specimen that we know as “Doryphoros” today. The work is so influential that the word has since become synonymous with (male) perfection.


	9. Action rituelle des ancêtres

In spite of their argument, and even with the fresh intelligence that Steve is _definitely_ getting the wrong idea, Natasha still can’t seem to stay away from the lab. The kind thing to do, the _right_ thing to do would be to explain everything to Steve: their history, their family, their little ritual.

 _Her_ little ritual. The other girls are dead, just decomposing skeletons in unmarked graves.

No. She won’t, _can’t_ tell Steve, or anyone else, for that matter. This is the only relic of her family left to her.

Like an answer to her internal turmoil, the cheerful opening strains of the _Diane et Actéon Pas de deux_ from _La Esmeralda_ filter into the room. 

Inwardly, she smiles, although it doesn’t show on her face. _Shuri_. The dance is delightfully acrobatic, even for the supporting nymphs - and distinctly Russian, having been choreographed by both Petipa and Vaganova. And the implications of Shuri selecting _La Esmeralda_ , the story about the beautiful gypsy girl, an outsider, who is accused of murder but ultimately vindicated through the goodness of her friends, who perseveres through hardship and earns her happily ever after...well, Natasha is touched. All in all, it’s not a bad guess for what Natasha might desire in a balletic piece.

But because Natasha is Natasha, she wonders if Shuri knows that the _pas de deux’s_ subject matter is merely an uninformed take on Greek tragedy. If she knows that Diana and Actaeon were never lovers, and that the story behind this particular dance does not end happily at all. That Actaeon had espied the goddess of the hunt bathing with her nymphs, nude and beautiful and _perfect_. 

That the enraged goddess transformed the hapless hunter into a stag, and he was torn apart by his own hunting hounds as punishment for his hubris.

* * *

The girls stared in shock. They had hoped the ice was melting in those first years of dancing the Spring Rounds. They had hoped that the thaw was coming, only to be disappointed the next time when a fresh layer of ice encrusted the tank’s porthole anew. They had hoped, but they all knew - deep down - that the Khorovod didn’t actually work, because they were spiderlings and wishes didn’t just come true. 

And yet.

Their father was standing right there. He was settled into the lethal, _familiar_ parade rest - as dark and implacable as death. She eagerly tried to catch his gaze, desperate to somehow telepathically convey a veritable tsunami of excited questions. How had he woken up? Had he heard their humming as they danced? Was he _warm_? It was so debilitatingly cold…

His flinty grey eyes held nothing, not even a single spark of recognition.

Natalia couldn’t stifle her quick intake of breath. Her Papa’s eyes had been warm; this man’s eyes were horrifyingly blank. She felt her own eyes welling with unbidden tears. It was true then, her Papa really was dead. She had no idea who this new man could be, and she was suddenly _terrified_.

“Papa!” She distantly heard Anna’s shrill voice. She whipped her head up, ready to reprimand her sister because this _wasn’t_ Papa and besides, Headmistress was _here_ , they weren’t _allowed_ -

Then the man wearing their father’s face flinched violently. He shook his great bearlike head, like he was shaking off water from his fur. He looked right at her, and she saw a minute flicker in his dull gaze.

“My…girl…s?” It had been so long since she’d heard his odd slurring accent. None of them had ever been able to replicate it.

“ _Papa_ ,” she whispered, awed. He was alive!

And then her joy crumbled to horror when the nightmare returned. A guard shoved a long metal pipe at Papa’s armpit and then he was screaming, his knees buckling from the pain. 

The screaming. It echoed painfully through her skull, and she still wasn’t sure if the screaming was real or if it only existed inside her head. The sound of electricity crackling through dry air was horrifyingly nostalgic. Her teeth were being squeezed out of her head, and she still wasn’t sure, she couldn’t be awake because this _had_ to be a nightmare...

But it wasn’t a nightmare, for once, because his eyes never left hers. They were desperate: like he was clinging to that singular, fleeting moment when he’d recognized her.

Like she was the only thing keeping him moored to life.

* * *

If anyone had bothered to ask her: _who do you think will cave and apologize first between you and Steve_? Natasha wouldn’t have even hesitated.

Of course it’d be her. Nobody ever said anything about sincerity.

So imagine her shock when Steve arrives at her room one morning (obviously fresh from his ridiculously early run with Sam, by the look of his sweat-drenched shirt) looking considerably hangdog and carrying something spotted and yellow and offensively floral.

“Here,” he mutters, shoving the bouquet at her.

She stares, incredulous. “You really suck at this, you know that?”

He runs his hand through his hair and cringes regretfully. “Sam told the vendor that ‘Leopard Orchid’ sounded pretty and badass-”

“I hate flowers,” she interrupts him. “They die too easily.”

He cringes (if possible) even more, rubbing his massive hand awkwardly on the back of his neck. “Look, I know I’ve been on edge about Buck, but that’s no excuse. He’s obviously a sore spot for you, but I kept pushing anyways because _I_ wanted to know. I was out of line.”

“You weren’t,” she says in her usual dry tone, to mask her disquietude that even _Steve_ has noticed her mask slipping. “But thanks for the effort anyways.”

Shit.

* * *

“Who the hell is Lilechka?”

They all stopped assembling their Makarov pistols and stared at Papa. Was it wrong to mention Lilja’s name? Yelena was the traitor, not Lilja.

Lilja, who had died painfully, wretchedly. Lilja, whose body was buried in a nondescript, unmarked corner of the courtyard. Lilja, whose rust-colored hair was - had been - just like Natalia’s. 

Lilja, whose face Natalia could barely even remember.

“Lilechka…” Anna said slowly, cautiously. “She is- _was_ one of us. The second eldest, after Yelena-”

And she snapped her mouth shut, already bracing herself for the reprimand, _for calling the traitor by name_ -

“Who the hell is Yelena?”

That’s when Natalia realized Papa was right, as always. It was far easier to believe he only had four daughters all along. It would be far easier, far less punishing, to simply forget.

* * *

She has a large audience tonight, it seems. Wanda and Shuri make an odd tableau, perched in Natasha’s usual spot beside the cryotank. They look prim and proper, like star pupils on their best behavior, although Shuri jiggles her knee with nervous, anticipatory energy.

Natasha approaches them cautiously, raising a single dyed-blonde eyebrow in query.

“We want to watch you dance!” Shuri bursts out, seemingly unable to restrain herself any longer. Wanda doesn’t add onto Shuri’s pleas, but her visage is so hopeful that she may as well have been pleading. 

Natasha looks from one expectant face to the other, and relents. “What do you want me to dance?”

They are momentarily taken aback at her unexpectedly gracious acquiescence. Shuri recovers first: “The famous one with the swan, please.”

Pavlova’s _The Dying Swan_. _How fitting_ , she thinks sardonically. “Got the music for me?” Natasha drawls.

“What’s it called?”

“ _Le Cygne_ , from Saint-Saëns's _Le Carnaval des animaux_.”

Ding. The ceiling chimes, and the piano’s delicately broken arpeggios echo into the lab.

Shit. She didn’t bring pointe shoes. It will be excruciating to dance _pas de bourrée couru_ without them, but Natasha’s well-versed in pain. She rises up onto her toe-tips at the haunting entrance of the cello. 

She unfurls her arms, dreamily circling her make-believe stage, effortlessly gliding across the vibranium floor as though it were a lake, the waves lapping to and fro and carrying her delicate form across its surface. She drifts towards the full-length window, away from the cryotank, striving for the sun slowly setting on the horizon, as though a mere moment more and she might take flight. 

Then the tension in the cello’s voice slowly, gradually relaxes and she sinks down, arms fluttering faintly. Weakly. Her legs are quivering from the pain of dancing _en pointe_ without pointe shoes, but she sinks down - onto her left knee - an aerial creature struggling against her earthly bonds.

It is there, transfixed by her pain, that she dies - gracefully, selflessly - but she dies all the same.

Shuri leaps to her feet, clapping enthusiastically, hollering praises, and already making requests for the next dance excitedly. And Wanda..?

Wanda’s eyes are sad.

* * *

When Headmistress granted Anna the honor of seducing and assassinating the secessionist leader, her father was inexplicably enraged. “You goddamn animals,” he spat furiously, surging against the cuffs of the chair. “They’re just little girls!”

Headmistress gaze met his fury coolly, betraying none of her own trepidation at facing down the Soldier’s primordial force. “They are more than experienced.” The two guards flanking her smirked at that.

The girls shivered and averted their eyes. Natalia’s lungs must have been malfunctioning because she was drawing in increasingly rapid breaths and yet _she wasn’t getting any oxygen_. She pushed aside the minor discomfort and did her best to maintain level eye contact with her father. _I must_ , she thought - wild and desperate, _or Papa will be lost to us again_. Her vision was blurring at the edges, and the room seemed to darken - was it nighttime already..? But they’d only just woken...

With a roar that was more beast than man, her father tore out of his bonds. The tension that had saturated the room snapped and the room dissolved into panic as technicians ran for cover and guards hoisted their weapons. Natalia watched, terrified and increasingly dizzy, as her father shrugged off round after round. Blood, vibrant and metallic, was pouring from the wounds littered all over his body, but he didn’t even seem to notice, his unrelenting focus on Headmistress, who was on her backside, scrabbling crablike to get away as he advanced on her, his face a rictus of wrathful vengeance. The guards stationed throughout the room were out of bullets and clutching their guns in hopeless prayer.

With a wordless snarl, her father seized the pair of guards by their gulping, pleading throats. His hands, one flesh and one metal, dwarfed their stringy necks. The entire room was silent but for their guttural choking. Even Headmistress was holding her breath.

His left thumb punctured its guard’s throat first. With a sickeningly wet retch, the guard’s windpipe sliced open. The metal arm held the man upright as he drowned in his own blood. The man’s eyes were wild with terror when he realized he was dying; he looked oddly like a marionette, dancing on cut strings.

“изволить...нет…” The other guard’s voice was pathetically weak, even as his eyes rolled wide in outright terror. He stared mutely at his compatriot’s mercilessly prolonged death.

The metal hand dropped its burden and came up to grab the second guard by the forehead. The flesh hand dug into his throat and ripped. The guard’s windpipe went flying in a dizzying spray of red. Surreally, it bounced across the floor, coming to a stop at Natalia’s bare toes.

She stared down at it dully, distantly proud that she didn’t even feel squeamish. It was a lurid yellow, marred and stained with copper. The steam rolling up her front was clearly visible in the cold air, and suddenly - irrationally - she wanted to back away from letting even the miniscule water particles _touch_ her. Her breath was coming, quicker and quicker and quicker, but she still wasn’t getting any air…

Her father didn’t make any sounds when a technician finally mustered up the courage to wield his nightmarish cattle prod. There were four techs on him, and he barely even grunted as they stuck him like livestock. He staggered towards the next guard...

Then the Handler burst into the room, snapping something out viciously.

But the trigger word was inaudible to Natalia when she finally fainted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The [_Pas de Diane_](https://youtu.be/cOcUA74O4wE?t=6) actually originates from [_Le Roi Candaule_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Kandavl_or_Le_Roi_Candaule), which is itself based on Herodotus’s [_Histories_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histories_\(Herodotus\)). The original choreography was created by the legendary Petipa for the Imperial Russian Ballet, and the dance was later shoehorned into Vaganova’s revival of [_La Esmeralda_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Esmeralda_\(ballet\)); today, the [_Diane et Actéon Pas de deux_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Kandavl_or_Le_Roi_Candaule#The_Diana_and_Actaeon_pas_de_deux) is performed almost exclusively as part of _La Esmeralda_. Furthermore, the _Pas de Diane_ was originally realized by Petipa as a [_pas de trois_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pas_de_trois) danced by [Diana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_\(mythology\)), [Endymion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endymion_\(mythology\)), and a [satyr](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyr). Vaganova removed the satyr’s role and made the strange choice of replacing Endymion with [Actaeon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actaeon), transforming the dance into a romantic _pas de deux_ ; Natasha alludes to the fact that Diana and Actaeon were far from lovers in Ovid’s [_Metamorphoses_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamorphoses).
> 
> [ _The Dying Swan_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dying_Swan), as seen [performed by Uliana Lopatkina](https://youtu.be/-T2UeKKac-s) for the Mariinsky Gala, is a solo dance choreographed specifically for _prima_ Anna Pavlova by Mikhaíl Fokín. Fokín also worked with Stravinsky on [_Petrushka_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrushka_\(ballet\)), which appears in Chapter 5.
> 
> [Dzhokhar Dudayev](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzhokhar_Dudayev) was the first President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria during the [First Chechen War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Chechen_War). Although he was assassinated on 21 April 1996, the Chechen secessionist forces continued to fight, and they managed to achieve _de facto_ \- though short-lived - independence from Russia in 1996.


	10. Danse sacrale (L'Élue)

Steve was practically bouncing on his toes in excitement today. Natasha eyed him with trepidation, but he only shot her a loopy grin; it seemed that he hadn’t been lying when he’d called himself “on edge,” and their little heart-to-heart really had resolved any lingering hard feelings.

“Happy to see Barnes at last?” Sam joined them, nodding at Natasha respectfully. Then he grinned jovially and punched Steve’s overlarge bicep.

“Only if you two kiss and make up,” Steve said sarcastically, but his tone held none of the bite from the other day. He laughed outright at Sam’s horrified expression as they ambled through the doors to the lab together. 

It looked like Shuri had already completed the defrosting process prior to their arrival, because the room was warm and welcoming. Natasha felt like she was in free-fall, the acute invertigo messing with her sense of balance, because while the room was familiar from so many nightly visits, she couldn’t feel any of the customary cold.

The cryotank took center place, its now-open glass commanding everyone’s attention. It looked like he was still sleeping, and

And a heavy revelation, merciless and unpredictable and unbidden like a flash frost, slammed into her full-tilt - while she stood there, mutely watching the happy group basking in the warm glow of Steve’s joy, rare as it was. She realized, for the first time, that this man has been absent from the vast majority of her sorry life, because _she'd failed him_. She promised him, with the others: to always protect each other, and she’d _broken_ her promise - like Lilja had, like Yelena, all of them, one after the other in a steady fatalistic line - and they’d all paid the price for breaking their promises, hadn't they? So who was she to wish for anything more, greedy little spider that she was? She hadn’t _the right_

She had no right to ask for her father back.

Feeling like an intruder, she turned and left the room. She didn’t notice that his fingers were twitching convulsively, tapping out an unsteady rhythm on the sterile vibranium surface:

tap **_tap_** tap tap **_tap_** tap tap tap

* * *

Papa is gone again, like Yelena, like Lilja, and Natalia just knows that it’s her fault, because she had been cлабый in that critical moment and fainted, losing eye contact with her father.

And now he is gone.

Natalia follows Headmistress through the corridor dully. Today is Ekaterina’s graduation, and Headmistress gathers them all in the hallway outside the doctor room to bear witness. Like Yelena before her, Ekaterina is wheeled towards them on a gurney. She looks vulnerable in the knee-length smock, with only a thin layer of paper to protect her from the chilled metal. Her wrists are cuffed to the cart legs, but she seems compliant and subdued and distant: like Yelena had been.

“Ekaterina is graduating today,” Headmistress intones the ritualistic words in her deep, velvety voice, and Natalia is inexplicably struck by the haunting sense that _she’s heard this before_. “No man will ever have power over her again. She will be made of marble.”

As she rattles past, Ekaterina meets their eyes for a fleeting moment. Her own eyes widen in abject horror, and Natalia is faintly insulted. Yelena had reacted in much the same way. Just what is so terrifying about the remaining, weaker Widows?

Natalia deliberately averts her gaze away from Ekaterina. It’s almost as good as turning her back against the other girl, but that is far too defiant - Headmistress would never allow her insubordination to go unscathed. Instead, Natalia studies the other twin: Tatiana is gritting her jaw, and a nervous muscle ticks in her otherwise soft cheek. And then Ekaterina is whisked through the double doors marking the threshold of the doctor room. Headmistress bustles inside after Ekaterina, presumably to bark out orders at the doctors, and the remaining spiderlings are left standing outside in the hallway, reluctantly holding their parade rests.

The minutes tick by, and Natalia is very bored. She sneaks another quick sideways peek: Tatiana is now worrying her lower lip with her teeth, but Anna’s blank mask is still perfect and composed like Natalia’s. Anna notices her sidelong glance and winks, her thick lashes brushing against her cheek, and Natalia feels the corner of her mouth tick upwards rebelliously.

There is shouting.

Headmistress’s yells are audible, although it’s impossible to discern her words, muffled as they are by the set of double doors. Other voices join the raucous din, more panicked and male.

Something’s wrong.

All pretense abandoned, the three girls turn their heads to look at each other nervously. 

The double doors slam open, smacking against the hallway walls and making the girls jump, and then Ekaterina is being rolled out. There’s a doctor on each side of the gurney, and their shouting becomes less panicked and more urgent. The doors swing shut once, then burst open again for Headmistress, who is panicked and angry and snarling threats at the doctors.

Something is wrong with Ekaterina. Now Natalia sees that the doctors sprinting alongside the gurney are holding Ekaterina down; or rather, they are _attempting_ to restrain her, because Ekaterina is bucking and seizing and contorting - her cornflower blue eyes are wide and unseeing like Papa’s had been on that horrible night, the first time he’d died - and her sable curls toss through a narrow ray of sunbeam filtering through the dirty windows in the hallway, the cold winter light illuminating the ebony strands. Her hair glints chrome like Papa’s left arm, shining and optimistic in spite of their dreary environment, and it’s so _hopeful_ that it steals Natalia’s breath away.

Then Ekaterina’s body lifts clear off the gurney and her mouth gapes open in a wordless banshee wail, reminding Natalia of _those_ nights, the worst nights, when Papa screamed and screamed and _screamed_ and she can’t do anything, only pray that he doesn’t die for good this time. 

And then Ekaterina is choking, horrible wet retches that gurgle out of her still-shrieking throat, and there is bloody foam spewing from her lips to spatter the doctors’ pristine white coats as she’s wheeled down the hallway, deeper into the compound.

In the ringing silence that follows, the three remaining girls stare at each other, abandoned by every last one of their chaperones. Natalia can’t even say anything, with her mouth as dry as the tundra. She tries anyways, but all that comes out is a dusty croak.

It’s the last time Natalia ever sees Ekaterina.

* * *

Wanda had followed her from the lab. Natasha was completely drained; for once, she didn’t even bother attempting misdirection: “I just need a moment to myself, Wanda.” Her voice hitched over the words. Fucking hell, was she even a Black Widow?

Wanda didn’t respond - just reached out to touch Natasha’s arm, gentle and grounding and understanding all at once. They stood like that, watching the beautiful Wakandan sunrise.

“Do you want me to block the memories of him?” Her throaty voice was non-judgmental. Natasha gaped at her, mouth lax in shock.

Wanda shrugged, smiling sadly. “The first time we met...when I messed in your head. I saw him, training you. Teaching you.” She paused, then tapped under her eyes meaningfully.

Natasha’s fingers came up to touch her own face, and they came away impossibly wet. She couldn’t seem to remember if she’d ever cried before; she thought she might have, but she couldn’t be sure. It hadn’t been allowed. 

She eventually found her words: “No...but thank you.”

You are stronger than marble, Наташка. Just who had told her that?

* * *

“Today, I have a gift for you, clever Tanechka.” Headmistress’s voice is saccharine-sweet. The girls are clinging onto every word falling from her lips, like treats from the Sugar Plum Fairy, and Natalia knows that she should feel the same but she only feels nauseous, like she’s eaten something that disagreed with her at lunch. 

The bound figure on the spartan chair groans quietly, the pitiful sound made more faint by the burlap sack over its head. It sounds like a child, high-pitched and reedy, but the target is clearly an adult, tall as it is. Female. Well-muscled. Gun-calloused palms. Threat level high.

The target is snuffling and whimpering wordlessly. Pathetic. Natalia eyes the target critically. Threat level low? The limbs are uncoordinated and trembling and it seems that the target is only staying upright due to the thick ropes binding it to its seat. Natalia has no idea why she suddenly catalogs that the target’s black hair spills out from the cloth like ink. It has a pretty chromatic sheen. It seems...familiar, somehow. 

Focus on the task at hand. Natalia dismisses her overly-descriptive threat analysis as irrelevant. It is just another target, another mission to be completed. The target ( _she_ ) is undeserving of pronouns.

“Is this a test?”

Natalia is good at keeping still, so she doesn’t react to Tatiana’s ridiculous question. Of course it’s a test. It's always a test.

Headmistress nods.

Tatiana releases the safety on the Makarov and levels the barrel at the target. She is strong because she is ( _was_ ) Ekaterina’s twin, and Katya was the top of their class. Tatiana can levy the heavy metal without letting her arm shake. Headmistress had been pleased with the twins on the day they could hold their guns without trembling. They had each gotten a sweet. Natalia still hasn’t earned her sweet like Tatiana has, but she doesn’t let that bother her. She’s only the smallest sister, after all. 

But Tatiana still doesn’t depress the trigger. Natalia glances at Headmistress in confusion. Had she given a second order? But no, Headmistress is sucking in her cheeks sourly, the action combining with her pale, high-sweeping cheekbones to give her the countenance of a skull.

Tatiana’s arm is beginning to tremble from the strain of aiming the heavy Makarov one-handed, and Natalia follows their gazes: from Headmistress to her sister to the target, whose

Whose hair is black, spilling out in waves from under the sack, and then she’s

She’s arching, straining against the ropes and

And before Natalia knows what she’s doing she’s at Tatiana’s side, her hands trying to wrest the gun from Tatiana’s loosening fingers, unsure whether she’s trying to stop Tatiana or finish the mission herself, because she can’t lose another sister, she _won’t_ -

“ты создан из мраморa.” Headmistress hisses, and Tatiana’s face goes blank, her fingers tighten, and-

 _Bang_.

The bullet sears through thin cloth but the entry angle is bad, because the sack tears the tiniest bit and Natalia catches the briefest glimpse of cornflower blue before the bright red bulls-eye blossoms across the dirty burlap, and then her mouth is open, she’s screaming, horrified-

And Headmistress’s teeth gleam, white and perfect, between burgundy lips.

* * *

When she sees Wanda slammed to the ground, Proxima Midnight looming over her like a spectre of death, she abandons her outrider and runs as quickly as her lungs allow. Faster. _She needs to reach her this time_. 

**ты создан из мраморa.**

_**You’re stronger than that** _ **.**

But Natalia learns that she isn’t when a madman snaps his fingers.

**Author's Note:**

> This story germinated from girlbookwrm’s heartbreaking timeline of Bucky tutoring the baby Widows in _[The Terror of Knowing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13901379)_ , Speranza's soul-shattering interweaving of art and characterization in _[Scenes from a Marriage: The Kandinsky](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3788446)_ , and morningwar’s unvarnished portrayal of muddled narrative in _[We Were Like Lions](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12745218)_. It is likely inspired by many other uncredited works in this vast fandom.
> 
> For fluffy baby Widow eyebleach/shenanigans: might I recommend [MomoYoMaki](https://archiveofourown.org/series/907983) and [Osidiano](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4172136), both of whom wrote wonderful AUs detailing Bucky’s escape with an entire soccer team's worth of tiny assassins in tow.


End file.
